This work reports the development of an approach to computer-aided control system design (CACSD). Of primary concern is the quality of co-operation between the designer and his computer. In order to achieve an effective co-operation, we propose a conceptual view of the CACSD problem to the designer, and develop a framework for the computer. The conceptual view is named Generalized Cooperative Search (GCS), which suggests the designer to treat a CACSD problem as a search problem, in which he and the computer co-operate to locate satisfactory designs among sets of candidates. The framework is Interactive Multi-Objective Programming (IMOP), which defines the level of abstraction as well as the organization of the design facilities in the computer. While IMOP methods and control system design methods provide readily usable tools organized by the framework, a design strategy is developed to guide the designer in their effective use. The strategy is a two-level plan of the design process which helps the designer to conduct his search problems as ones of IMOP. He constructs parametrized sets of candidate designs using the design methods (innovates in level I) and matches his design wishes with the design possibilities amongst these candidates using the IMOP methods (trade-offs in level II). The advantages of this approach are (1) a proper emphasis is put on an effective designer-computer co-operation, the designer is supported rather than forced to follow any planned course of actions; (2) a uniform trade-off among design objectives receive their long due attention and (3) it is pluralistic and different design methods may be combined for their respective strengths. The work conducted is likely to be the first integrated approach to designing control systems by search, and may even be the first which supports the principal design stages (formulation, generation and evaluation) in a co-ordinated as well as most general manner. The proposed approach has a promising prospect of being one for the general areas of computer-aided design in engineering and decision support systems in scientific management.

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Thesis (M.Eng.Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Engineering, 1999. / Bibliography: leaves 109-113.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 1994. / Title from PDF t.p.

British Rail has been designing active suspensions for some 16 years, starting with tilt systems for the Advanced Passenger train. These have been designed using classical control techniques requiring a combination of experience, intuition and frequency response stability techniques, such as Nichols' plots. In order to see if a more systematic approach to control system design could produce improvements in performance and implementation the current investigation was instigated in which controllers designed using classical techniques are compared with controllers designed using linear optimal control theory. The active suspension used for the investigation was an Electro Magnetic active vertical suspension fitted to a service MkIII coach. Design of the actuators is described in the thesis along with the design of analogue and digital control systems. Two classical control systems were designed. a simple "Sky Hook" damper control system and a more sophisticated position control system developed from British Rail's experience with Maglev suspensions. A regulator designed using linear optimal control theory was found to give very good results in theory. However to implement the regulator it was necessary to design a system observer. In order to achieve a practically realisable observer considerable rationalisation of the vehicle model was required, which drew heavily on experience gained designing classical control systems. The classical control systems proved to be much easier to commission than the optimal controllers as they were designed with implementation in mind. During track testing problems of interaction between vehicles were encountered, as a result the biggest improvements in ride were obtained with the simple Sky Hook damper, as it was less specific to the vehicle than the other configurations. With further development one of the optimal control systems considered will probably turn out to be the most effective as it draws on the attributes of both classical and optimal design techniques.