When I did my Masters Thesis in Chemical Engineering I chose to do it on a Control system problem even though I had never taken a class on it. To make a long story short I learned it on my own with encouragement from my thesis advisor.
As a result of this I got two job offers to become a rocket engineer/scientist to assist the companies in eliminating the costly and threatening rocket engine instability.
Enough personal stuff. Control systems are used throughout industry, in our homes our places of work, where we drink coffee.
Basically it is the discipline of controlling one or more conditions in a system. A simple example is to control the temperature in our house. Here we set a desired temperature.. If the room temperature deviates from the set amount Heat is turned on and when the control point is reached it is turned off. There is built in logic to take care of dithering and in the more sophisticated controllers the amount if deviation might drive the furnaces.
The ability to control a system is dependent on the time delay between the measuring point and the actual system. It is dependent upon the capacity of the system. Systems that have time delays or who are poorly understood can be non-controllable and can also add to the complexity of future products.
Too understand operational systems and their formulation.
Control system theory makes us think in terms of time, operation, personnal, busines rules, capacity, deltas proprotional, derivative and integral control.
We cannot control unless we have something definitive to measure. We will not effective control unless our measuring subject and point of observation is near by. If the thing we are using to adjust the condition we are measuring cannot make enough difference in the outcome then we are going basically open loop. If the capacity of the system we are measuring is very very large then we will not see a change for a while unless we are able to shut off or bring a large amount of substance to the problem.
It is possible if the system has capacity and if we have a time delay in measurement that the system can go unstable of near unstable. So what does all of this have to do with the general subject covered here on "UNAMENTECHIARA". If one does not understand Control system theory they would have dificulty understanding why large government, socialistic societies, and why things were not "shovel ready". Why did we have the excessive inflation rescession swings in the 70s and 80s and now we will have an even larger one facing us. Lack of appreciation of control system theory by a host of socialist minded lawyers who now run this country.
When if comes to mind related things much can be learned by control system theory.
But hat is enough for now.
