A major problem in control engineering is robust feedback design that
stabilizes a nominal plant while also attenuating the influence of
parameter variations and external disturbances. This monograph addresses
this problem in uncertain discontinuous dynamic systems with special
attention to electromechanical systems with hard-to-model nonsmooth
phenomena such as friction and backlash. Ignoring these phenomena may
severely limit performance so the practical utility of existing smooth
control algorithms becomes questionable for many electromechanical
applications.
With this motivation, Discontinuous Systems develops nonsmooth
stability analysis and discontinuous control synthesis based on novel
modeling of discontinuous dynamic systems, operating under uncertain
conditions. While being primarily a research monograph devoted to the
theory of discontinuous dynamic systems, no background in discontinuous
systems is required; such systems are introduced in the book at the
appropriate conceptual level. Being developed for discontinuous systems,
the theory is successfully applied to their subclasses -
variable-structure and impulsive systems - as well as to finite- and
infinite-dimensional systems such as distributed-parameter and
time-delay systems. The presentation concentrates on algorithms rather
than on technical implementation although theoretical results are
illustrated by electromechanical applications. These specific
applications complete the book and, together with the introductory
theoretical constituents bring some elements of the tutorial to the
text.
