Root locus

Chapter 7
Outline
• Understanding the concept of locus
• Understanding the concept of root-locus and its role in control system
design
• Introducing the algorithm to sketch the root-locus of a system
• Introducing PID and its role in the control systems
• The role of root locus in the sensitivity of a system
• Introducing the PID controller design based on root locus analysis
The concept of locus

• Locus: the set of all points whose location is determined by stated

conditions
Root-locus of a closed-loop system

• Root-locus technique is a graphical method for sketching the locus of

roots in the s-plane as a parameter is varied

• It can provides graphical information and an approximation sketch

can be used to obtain qualitative information concerning STABILITY
and TRANSIEN PERFORMANCE of a system
Root-locus of a closed-loop system
• Assume that we have a system like the figure:

• The characteristic equation of the system would be:

Root-locus of a closed-loop system
• If we write this equation in the phasor format, then we will have:

• Like all the complex numbers, it has a magnitude and the phase:

• Where n can be:

Root-locus of a closed-loop system

Like Gain of the system (k)

Example
• Assume that we have a system like below and want to find out the
root-locus of the closed-loop system when the “k” is changing from 0
to infinity
Example
• The characteristic equation of the system is:

• Now we want to trace the roots of this polynomial by changing the

values of the K
• For this purpose, we write a MATLAB code
Example
for i=0:10
G=tf([0 1],[1 2 i]);
hold on,pzmap(G)
xlim([-3 1])
ylim([-5 5])
title(['K=',num2str(i)])
pause(1)
end
Finding a desired “K” from root-locus
• Assume that the root-locus of a system is :
• IF we want to find a “K” corresponding
to a specific point(s) of root-locus, what
should we do?
• Remember the expression below?!
Finding a desired “K” from root-locus
• It means that whatever the “K” is, the magnitude of the |KG(s)|
would be equal to 1.
• The absolute value in graphical root-locus means the distance of the
specific point on the s-plane
• Generally, we can write :

𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑝 𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛
|𝐾| =
𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑧𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑝 𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛
Example
• In this example K1 is the gain that places
the poles of the system on the red-squares
Question (with bonus)
• Assume that we come up with an idea that our system will have a
specific behaviour if its pole(s) is located on a point in s-plane where
the branches of the root-locus are not passing through it. What do we
have to do in this case?
• In order to find what
parameter of the system may
This situation happen?
Answers
Answers
Answers
Delay step response (topic from chapter 5)
• Sometimes it takes time from when the system gets input till it shows
response at the output.
• These types of systems are called delay-systems. (it is called S-shape
response)
Root-locus sketch procedure
• Before start the root-locus procedure, let’s review the advantages of root-
locus technique:
1) It can help us to modify the system’s behaviour based on the place of its
poles and zeros
2) It can help us to find the proper gain to keep the system stable
3) It can help us to realize the range of the gain for the system where it is
stable
4) All it can do is only based on the “OPEN-LOOP” transfer function (OLTF).
It means that without calculating the closed-loop transfer function
(CLTF), we can discuss about its behaviour based on the root-locus of the
open-loop transfer function
Root-locus sketch procedure
Root-locus sketch procedure (important
conclusions)

• 1) If K>0, by increasing K from zeros to infinity, the poles will move

toward zeros on the root-locus traces
• 2) In most of the transfer functions, the zeros are in the infinity; it the
other words, the order of the numerator is less than the order of the
denominator. Therefore, we see some branches start from poles and
going to infinity
• 3) To sketch the root-locus of a system, we have to only find the poles
and zeros of the open-loop system and sketch the root-locus based
on the place of poles and zeros
Root-locus sketch procedure
• Step 1) Based on the explained procedure, find the zeros and poles of
the open-loop system
• Step2) Locate the segments of the real axis that are root loci. The
root locus on the real axis always lies in a section of the real axis to
the left of an odd number of poles and zeros