Major upgrades of control design software

Citation

(2007), "Major upgrades of control design software", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 79 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2007.12779aad.014

Major upgrades of control design software

Major upgrades of control design software

The MathWorks recently announced major upgrades to three of its control design software products – Control system toolbox 7, Simulink control design 2 and Simulink response optimization 3. The new versions provide a stronger integration with Simulink to create a streamlined platform for control design and optimization using model- based design. A new graphical user interface unifies the three products, enabling control engineers of all experience levels to tune and optimize control systems on multidomain plant models directly in Simulink.

Across industries such as aerospace, defense, automotive, industrial automation and consumer electronics, the growing number and the complexity of design requirements engineers face has fuelled a demand for sophisticated control design strategies, which are typically difficult to implement. Responding to this demand, The MathWorks not only expanded control design capabilities with the upgrades, but also seamlessly integrated the control design products with Simulink to simplify the workflow, reducing the number of design cycles and increasing productivity.

Together, the trio of products facilitates the control design process. Control system toolbox gives engineers the ability to systematically analyze, design, and tune control systems. Simulink control design enables the design and analysis of sophisticated multi-loop control systems directly in Simulink. With Simulink response optimization, engineers can use numerical optimization to tune the response of systems modeled in Simulink, satisfying performance requirements.

“One of the primary goals of these upgrades was to make systematic control design techniques more accessible. The tighter integration of control design software with Simulink helps engineers reduce the need for trial-and-error design and greatly simplifies the analysis and tuning of multi-loop systems,” said Paul Barnard, Marketing Director, control design at The MathWorks. “Furthermore, engineers can now apply numerical optimization to control design to maximize system performance in fewer design cycles.”

The integrated environment of control system toolbox, Simulink control design, Simulink response optimization, and Simulink lets engineers make design tradeoffs and optimize the performance and robustness of the overall control system. Control engineers tune the control parameters in their Simulink model either graphically or by using automated techniques such as PID or LQG. With built-in visualization tools, engineers can graphically analyze the effects of loop interactions, closed-loop performance and actuator bandwidth. They can graphically specify design requirements in both time and frequency domains, such as rise time and overshoot or phase and gain margins and then apply numerical optimization techniques to simultaneously tune the entire system to meet those requirements.

Details available from: The MathWorks Ltd, Tel: +1 (0)1223 226 700.