Stability Tests for a Class of 2D Continuous-Discrete Linear Systems with Dynamic Boundary Conditions

Repetitive processes are a distinct class of 2D systems of both practical and theoretical interest. Their essential characteristic is repeated sweeps, termed passes, through a set of dynamics defined over a finite duration with explicit interaction between the outputs, or pass profiles, produced as the system evolves. Experience has shown that these processes cannot be studied/controlled by direct application of existing theory (in all but a few very restrictive special cases). This fact, and the growing list of applications areas, has prompted an on-going research programme into the development of a 'mature' systems theory for these processes for onward translation into reliable generally applicable controller design algorithms. This paper develops stability tests for a sub-class of so-called differential linear repetitive processes in the presence of a general set of initial conditions, where it is known that the structure of these conditions is critical to their stability properties

European White Book on Real-Time Power Hardware in the Loop Testing : DERlab Report No. R- 005.0

The European White Book on Real-Time-Powerhardware-in-the-Loop testing is intended to serve as a reference document on the future of testing of electrical power equipment, with specifi c focus on the emerging hardware-in-the-loop activities and application thereof within testing facilities and procedures. It will provide an outlook of how this powerful tool can be utilised to support the development, testing and validation of specifi cally DER equipment. It aims to report on international experience gained thus far and provides case studies on developments and specifi c technical issues, such as the hardware/software interface. This white book compliments the already existing series of DERlab European white books, covering topics such as grid-inverters and grid-connected storag

A new breakthrough in linear-system theory: Kharitonov's result

Given a real coefficient polynomial D(s), there exist several procedures for testing whether it is strictly Hurwitz (i.e., whether it has all its zeros in the open left-half plane). If the coefficients of D(s) are uncertain and belong to a known interval, such testing becomes more complicated because there is an infinitely large family of polynomials to which D(s) now belongs. It was shown by Kharitonov that in this case it is necessary and sufficient to test only four polynomials in order to know whether every polynomial in the family is strictly Hurwitz. An interpretation of this result in terms of reactance functions (i.e., LC impedances) was recently proposed. These results were also extended recently for the testing of positive real property of rational transfer functions with uncertain denominators. In this paper we review these results along with detailed proofs and discuss extensions to the discrete-time case

Characterising linear spatio-temporal dynamical systems in the frequency domain

A new concept, called the spatio-temporal transfer function (STTF), is introduced to characterise a class of linear time-invariant (LTI) spatio-temporal dynamical systems. The spatio-temporal transfer function is a natural extension of the ordinary transfer function for classical linear time-invariant control systems. As in the case of the classical transfer function, the spatio-temporal transfer function can be used to characterise, in the frequency domain, the inherent dynamics of linear time-invariant spatio-temporal systems. The introduction of the spatio-temporal transfer function should also facilitate the analysis of the dynamical stability of discrete-time spatio-temporal systems

Numerical stability for finite difference approximations of Einstein's equations

We extend the notion of numerical stability of finite difference approximations to include hyperbolic systems that are first order in time and second order in space, such as those that appear in Numerical Relativity. By analyzing the symbol of the second order system, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for stability in a discrete norm containing one-sided difference operators. We prove stability for certain toy models and the linearized Nagy-Ortiz-Reula formulation of Einstein's equations. We also find that, unlike in the fully first order case, standard discretizations of some well-posed problems lead to unstable schemes and that the Courant limits are not always simply related to the characteristic speeds of the continuum problem. Finally, we propose methods for testing stability for second order in space hyperbolic systems.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Dissipative stability theory for linear repetitive processes with application in iterative learning control

This paper develops a new set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the stability of linear repetitive processes, based on a dissipative setting for analysis. These conditions reduce the problem of determining whether a linear repetitive process is stable or not to that of checking for the existence of a solution to a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Testing the resulting conditions only requires compu- tations with matrices whose entries are constant in comparison to alternatives where frequency response computations are required

SMT-Based Bounded Model Checking of Fixed-Point Digital Controllers

Digital controllers have several advantages with respect to their flexibility and design's simplicity. However, they are subject to problems that are not faced by analog controllers. In particular, these problems are related to the finite word-length implementation that might lead to overflows, limit cycles, and time constraints in fixed-point processors. This paper proposes a new method to detect design's errors in digital controllers using a state-of-the art bounded model checker based on satisfiability modulo theories. The experiments with digital controllers for a ball and beam plant demonstrate that the proposed method can be very effective in finding errors in digital controllers than other existing approaches based on traditional simulations tools