Question 13.4: FINDING THE STEP RESPONSE OF UNITY FEEDBACK CONTROL SYSTEM A...
FINDING THE STEP RESPONSE OF UNITY FEEDBACK CONTROL SYSTEM
A unity feedback control system is shown in Figure 13.17. The reference input v_{r} is a step voltage of 1 V. Use PSpice to plot the transient response of the output voltage v_{o} for a duration of 0 to 10 sec in steps of 10 msec. The gain K is to be varied from 0.5 to 2 with an increment of 0.5. Assume that all initial conditions are zero.

Learn more on how we answer questions.
The relations among V_{r}, V_{o}, and V_{e}, in Laplace’s s domain, are
V_{e}(s) =V_{r}(s) -V_{o}(s)
\frac{V_{0}(s)}{V_{e}(s)} =\frac{K}{s(1+s)(1+0.2s)}
which gives
[s(1+s)(1+0.2s)]V_{0}(s)=KV_{e}(s)
[s+1.2s^{2}+0.2s^{3}]V_{0}(s)=KV_{e}(s)
which can be written in the time domain as
0.2\frac{d^{3}v_{o} }{dt^{3} } +1.2\frac{d^{2} v_{o} }{dt^{2} } +\frac{dv_{o} }{dt} =Kv_{e}=K(v_{r}-v_{o}) (13.1)
Dividing both sides by 0.2 gives
\frac{d^{3}v_{o} }{dt^{3} } +6\frac{d^{2} v_{o} }{dt^{2} } +5\frac{dv_{o} }{dt} =5Kv_{e}
where v_{e} = v_{r} – v_{o}, or
\frac{d^{3}v_{o} }{dt^{3} }= -6\frac{d^{2} v_{o} }{dt^{2} } -5\frac{dv_{o} }{dt} +5Kv_{e} (13.2)
which can be denoted by
\overset{…}{v}_{o} =-6\ddot{v}_{0} –5\dot{v}_{o}+5Kv_{e} (13.3)
Integrating the third derivative three times should yield the second derivative of v_{o}, the first derivative of v_{o}, and the output v_{o}. The third derivative on the left- hand side of Equation 13.3 must equal the sum of the terms on the right-hand side. The circuit for PSpice simulation of Equation 13.2 is shown in Figure 13.18.
The gain K is defined in PSpice as a variable.
The input voltage v_{in} is obtained from
v_{in} = \overset{…}{v}_{o}=-6\ddot{ v}_{0} –5\dot{v}_{o}+5Kv_{e}
It should be noted that the output signal of an integrator is inverted. This should be taken into account in summing signals v_{in} and v_{e}.
We can use the ABMs to represent the transfer function and the comparator as shown in Figure 13.18(b).
The listing of the circuit file is as follows:
Example 13.4 Unity feedback control system with a step input
SOURCE Vr 8 0 PWL (0 0V 1NS 1V 10MS 1V) ; Reference voltage
Rg 8 0 10MEG CIRCUIT .PARAM VAL = 10K ; Parameter VAL .STEP PARAM VAL 10K 40K 10K ; Step change of parameter VAL ANALYSIS .TRAN 0.01S 10S UIC ; Use initial condition in transient analysis .END |
The plot of the transient response for the feedback control system is shown in Figure 13.19. A higher value of K gives more overshoot and the system tends to be unstable. The transient should settle to the input signal level.


