Controls has become one of the biggest (and most important) areas in electrical engineering. However, many times when implementing a controls solution, we need to work with linear systems. The majority of real life systems are not linear! So how do we fix this? With linearization. In this article I’ll walk you through an example of how to linearize a system around a certain state vector and control input!
Example control system
It’s quite easy to develop a lack of connection between mathematics and application, which inspired this article. That said, mechanical engineering is not my profession, so I would like to detail another brief article about how math is actually used. In this article I’ll take you through designing a simple differentiator circuit, a circuit that performs the derivative on an input signal. In practice, you might need this as part of a controller for a temperature system, determining how “fast” the temperature is changing. More after the jump
So you are hopefully (read: not) familiar with the electric field due to an infinite line of charge. But what if the line of charge is only infinite in one direction? Say the line of charge extends from the origin to positive infinite on the x axis. What is the electric field at a point a on the y axis? This horrible article will explain how to figure that out. Continue reading »
From your intro physics or circuits course, you have probably become familiar with how to find the equivalent resistance of a network by breaking it down into series and parallel components. However, not all networks are strictly series or parallel. In this article I’ll walk you through one method of solving for equivalent resistance of a network — specifically by placing a test voltage on the start of the network and solving for currents and internal nodal voltages.