The thesis consists of twelve papers which present work on two
distinct but related topics concerning high performance control
systems: firstly the design of controllers for electromagnetically
suspended vehicles, and secondly methods for
efficient design of digital controllers for this and other
applications.
The first topic is covered by seven papers which range from
consideration of the underlying theory through to the specific
design of the suspension control system for British Rail's
experimental vehicle, also applied to the world's first
commercial Maglev system at Birmingham Airport. Not only are the
control engineering considerations described, but also the
dynamic requirements of providing an adequate ride quality using
the electro-magnets alone are addressed in some detail.
The remaining five papers consider the problems of translating
compensator transfer functions such as phase advances, lagleads,
"notch"filters etc. for implementation on microprocessor
systems. They introduce a practical method for appraising
coefficient sensitivity, which leads on to a novel structure for
recursive digital filters using the so-called 0 operator rather
than the traditional z operator. Detailed implementation is
considered from the point of view of hardware and software, but
making use of the new structure which is designed to minimise
computation requirements. Specific examples for the digital
cont roller methodology are drawn 'from the Maglev control application
