Customer Reviews

Control System Design Guide, Third Edition: Using Your Computer to Understand and Diagnose Feedback Controllers

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While the 1st edition of the book is itself a good text on the subject, how could this book be improved upon? It appears that the 1st edition is at best only an outline of what appears it the 2nd edition. Each of the subjects is covered in much more detail than the 1st edition. New subjects have also been added. Just the section on motors makes this book worth reading. The appendix is very interesting reading, and could almost be made into a quick reference book itself!

The book is well organized, and subjects are presented in a logical sequence: The Z domain makes a lot more sense if one first understands the S domain. The writing style is excellent, and has a way of explaining potentially confusing material, in a simple, clear manner. The mathematics throughout the book helps explain the much of theory, but if the reader doesn't care for the math, an understanding of the subject can still be gained without it.

Many college texts approach the subject from theory alone. While this book also provides the theory, it also presents the practical application side in a perfect balance. It is apparent that the author has worked in the real world. Also appreciated was the free Model-Q software examples sprinkled through out the book. They enable a reader the ability to experiment with the examples, and gain a better understanding of each of the subjects.

While this text is a very thorough, where a reader wants to explore a subject further, the numerous references to other sources are everywhere. No matter how much you think you may know about the subject, there is something everyone can learn from this book. This book is control systems A-Z, and is the best book I have seen on the subject. I highly recommend this book to anyone regardless of his or hers expertise level.

-Dave Trapasso

I have a whole shelf of control theory books, and this one is the one I use most. Ellis is one of the few people writing on control theory who actually designs working industrial control systems for a living. All the usual theory is in there: Laplace transforms, Z-transforms, and the S-plane. But this author has a much clearer idea about what actually works in the real world than most control theorists.

This is a really good book that simplified control system for the real world. Most text spend too much time on theory and analysis and end the discussion with a bunch of equations and graphs without explaining how to implement the design. This book covers both analog and digital control, and lets you download a software from the author's web site. This software, ModelQ, lets you play with various parameters so you can see how the system behaves when it is not optimized.

One drawback with the book is it only covers PID control and its variants, but doesn't cover state-space control. While state-space control may be considered "overkill" by many control engineers, state-space is used in industry. The decision to use state-space is often not in the hands of individual engineers, so it may not be an option to ignore state-space. It would be nice if Mr. Ellis could cover state-space in his next edition of the book.

George Ellis does a great job of bridging the gap between academia and industy in Control System Design Guide 2nd Edition. This book gives the practicing engineer the information necessary to put into practice much of the theory that he/she learned in the university. The book primarily focuses on motion control and modeling of motion systems. If you are working on a control system and would like to make sure you get the performance you need, you should buy this book.

This book is NOT just another academically oriented controls textbook. This book focuses exclusively on servo and motion systems. It presents highly complex topics, but avoids relying on detailed mathematical analysis, and instead emphasizes practical approaches that can be applied by anyone working on drive and motion systems. The book coveys complex topics in a clear and enlightening manner. Perhaps the most outstanding feature of this book is its use of ModelQ®. ModelQ® is a Windows© based modeling and simulation program written by the author and available at his website. It is used to illustrate and demonstrate various control concepts. ModelQ® has a very easy and intuitive user interface. ModelQ also contains a Digital Signal Analyzer (DSA). The DSA is a graphical display of the Bode plot (gain and phase) of the transfer function for the selected system output vs. the selected input. While this topic is heavily covered in most college controls courses and textbooks, few convey an understanding of the frequency domain performance of systems as clearly as this book and ModelQ®. The book has an excellent chapter on compliance and resonance. The effects of gearboxes, direct coupling, damping, and inertia mismatch are explored in depth. The PID is examined extensively. Six forms of PID are presented. The effects and interaction of each PID term is discussed. The strengths and drawbacks of each controller, as well as tradeoffs in simplicity and complexity, are summarized in a comparison chart. A flow chart to select the best controller structure based on needs is presented. Traditional tuning, such as "seat of the pants" and Zielger-Nichols is discussed. A flow chart based on frequency zoned tuning is presented that results in a simple, repeatable tuning technique. An entire chapter is provided on feed-forward techniques and how feed forward can be used to dramatically improve control system performance without any risk of stability problems. The chapter on motors covers motor design and construction, synchronous, induction, and reluctance motors, magnetics theory, motor speed- torque curves, linear & rotary motors, commutation, field weakening, power bridges, modulation, and flux-vector algorithms. I believe you will thoroughly enjoy the Control System Design Guide. This book covers a broad range of control topics, and addresses them in the framework of servo systems in a practical and application-oriented manner. Whether you are a controls technician or advanced degreed control engineer, this book will definitely make you more skilled and practiced in the art of control system design for servo and motion systems. I highly recommend Control Systems Design Guide as an extremely practical and thorough servo system controls reference.

I attended a seminar given by the author in May 2000 and was given an early copy of this book. Without question, the book should be owned by anyone involved with feedback control systems. While solidly grounded in theory, the content of the book stresses the practical side of control systems. The subject matter is primarily directed towards motion control but the majority of the book would be useful to those involved with process control or other control loops.

The book is well organized and clearly written. You are never left wondering what the author was trying to convey. Most importantly, the book delineates control systems as they are actually implemented today. The book stresses the different types of PID control loops that are used, why and when they are used and how to tune them in detail. Command feedforward and disturbance responce is covered as an integral part of the control loops, subjects that are critically important to modern control systems but are often ignored in other control textbooks. There are two chapters on non-linearities and loop resonance's, what they are and how to deal with them including limitations to the fixes. Some new, practical, cutting edge control enhancements are also discussed.

The book uses a Windows based modeling program to simulate how real control systems work. If you can point and click, you can use this simulator. Although this program is called a learning tool, I'm certain it will be used to simulate real systems.

This book, in my opinion, is a tour de force work for control system design, implementation and tuning.

Ellis has made a fantastic book on PID and similar control loops. He takes a very different tact than most controls books -- he writes with a voice similar to a handbook, but delivers enough content to compete with more traditional textbook-style controls books. It is light on the math in comparison, but I don't find myself wanting for more math.

I do a lot of controls design, consulting, and teaching. I recommend this book often and find that people that buy it uniformly track me down and thank me for the recommendation. I can't think of much higher praise for this book.

I had three main reasons for buying this book:
1. To bridge the gap between the control theory from school and the systems that I now design and build
2. To gain insight on how to improve the performance and reliability of real motion systems
3. To find ways to apply advanced techniques to help meet challenging performance requirements

I got all of this and more from this book. The topics covered clearly and concisely in this book span three courses I took at Cal Poly SLO: basic controls, digital controls, and modern/advanced control theory. Mr. Ellis does a great job of quickly introducing these topics and getting straight to the practical implications.

The free software and examples work well to illustrate his points quickly and easily while helping to commit the insights to memory. I also hope to use it as a training tool for our techs.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working with control systems, especially grad students and people getting started in the field. I look forward to reading his book on observers.

Please note that a new edition of this book was published in May 2000 and is also available on this website. The book has been greatly expanded and is receiving great reviews. The book is still entitled Control System Design Guide 2nd edition.

Most texts on industrial control are long on theory and short on practice. This book is a rare gem that presents the theory (without overloading you on details) and then explains how to actually use the theory in practice. (One note: the practical applications are focused on electric motor control, which is the author's background.) If I had to have only one book on controls in my library, this would be the one.