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Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL 2009) INTI University College, Malaysia

ENHANCING THE UNDERSTANDING OF CONTROL SYSTEM ENGINEERING WITH THE AID OF COMMERCIAL SOFTWARES
Arwinder Singh1 and Federico Roy Jr2
INTI University College, Malaysia (1arwinder@intimal.edu.my; 2federico@intimal.edu.my)

ABSTRACT
The basic understanding of circuits is critical in many electrical and electronics engineering application. This is very important as this helps the students derive the transfer function as needed in understanding the concepts of control engineering and then the output response of the systems as shown in the two papers written by both Dong (2004) and Avitabile (2006). Unfortunately, most engineering students at undergraduate level often fail to truly comprehend this material in their earlier semesters. This might be due to lack of motivation to retain the information since they feel no compelling reason to do so. The new approach which has been proposed will allow the students to use both Matlab and Multisim software to further complement the lecture material presented in class. The students can then use this software to further help themselves in gaining a more thorough understanding and appreciation of the systems under consideration. These transfer function can then be presented or modified into a multitude of different presentation forms such as bode plot, rootlocus, Nyquist plot, step response etc to further analyze the system.

KEYWORDS
Circuit analysis, Control system, Softwares

INTRODUCTION The concepts and understanding of control systems engineering requires the students not only to have a strong foundation in mathematics,circuit analysis but also strong visualization abilities.This is one of the main reasons students dread learning this subject.With proper use of avaliable commercial software, it is strongly believed that the interest of students as well as the understanding of the concepts of control systems engineering can be enhanced. The Commericial Softwares The two software that are used in this paper are namely the Multisim software and Matlab. Multisim is a commercial software which was designed by the National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group which has an easy-to-use circuit designer and simulator. Matlab, on the other hand, uses high-level language and interactive environment that helps perform computationally intensive tasks faster than with traditional programming languages such as C, C++, and Fortran.
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METHODOLOGY To show how these two softwares can be used to help in simplifing the teaching and understanding of control systems, a simple circuit has been constructed on multisim software as shown in Figure 1. This circuit is then simulated and the transient analysis result is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. The circuit which is to be simulated on Multisim software

Figure 2. The result of the transient analysis shown in Multisim To explain how this result is obtained, the same circuit can be modified into its equivalent Laplace domain or sometimes called the s domain as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The circuit has being change into the s domain Using a simple Kirchoffs analysis, the equation shown below can be obtained from Figure 3. V1 ( s) = I1 R1 + [ I1 I 2 ]L1s [V1 ( s) I1 R1 ][ 1 ] = I1 I 2 L1s 1 ] C1s (2) (3) (1)

[ I1 I 2 ]L1s = I 2 [ R2 + [ I1 I 2 ][ L1C1s 2 ] = I2 R2C1s + 1 Vo ( s) = I 2 R2

Since voltage and currents can be assume to be signals, the equations (1), (2) and (3) are now redrawn into its equivalent block diagram as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The equivalent circuit diagram for equations (1), (2) and (3)

The circuit in Figure 4 is then joined together to complete a closed loop block diagram has shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. The closed loop block diagram for the circuit shown in Figure 1. When the block diagram has been simplified, the transfer function can be obtained as Vo (s) R 2 L1C1s 2 = Vi (s) L1C1[R1 + R 2 ]s 2 + L1[R 1R 2 + 1]s + R 1 By substituting the values into (4), the transfer function becomes Vo (s) 5s 2 = Vi (s) 6s 2 + 5010s + 10000 (5) (4)

Since we want to find the output in time domain, the equation (5) will be modified into equation (4) as shown below:
V0 (s) = 5s 2 xVi (s) 6s 2 + 5010s + 10000

where Vi(s) is the step input


V0 (s) = 5s 0.8333s 0.8353 0.002 = = 6s + 5010s + 10000 ( s + 832.9992)( s + 2.0008) s + 832.9992 s + 2.0008
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Vo (t) 0.8353e833t 0.002e 2t Volts


The output waveform can be drawn manually, but this will be time consuming.

(6)

To explain how Matlab can be used to draw the output of equation (6), the transfer function in step (5) can be solve using the Matlab command as shown:
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n=[5 0 0]; d=[6 5010 10000]; step(n,d)

Figure 6. Output of Matlab command form equation (5). FEEDBACK FROM STUDENTS A survey was carried out on a group of 30 students using a combination of questionnaires, interview and class room observation. Out of this number, 15 students had previously attended the control system class whereas the balance 15 students are currently attending this course. The students were surveyed on four main categories. Firstly, the effect of simulation on the understanding of the circuit under observation; secondly, did they find the class room lectures clear enough to fully understand the working of system without the aid of simulation software; thirdly, did simulation help them build confidence in analyzing other circuit on their own and the final question was used to survey the usefulness of various colours in helping them visualize the working of the system. About 73% of the students that had completed the courses felt that simulation would have actually helped them a lot to improve the overall understanding on how to find the transfer function of the system under consideration whereas the other 27% felt that the simulation would have only help them slightly. When the same question was asked to the students presently attending the course about 27% of the students felt that simulation had actually help them a lot to improve the overall understanding on how to derive the transfer function of the system under consideration whereas the other 73% felt that the simulation had only helped them to understand the system slightly better.
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When asked about the effectiveness of class room lectures, about 73% of the former students and 13% of the existing students surveyed felt that the class room lectures were clear enough to fully understand the transfer function of system under consideration. The higher percentage was awarded by the former students, not only reveal that they had successfully completed their course but also that the existing students were still grasping the concept of transfer function as they are still undergoing the course. Another important observation made, was that the average marks obtained by former students on this topic and similar questions were 20% higher than the existing students. When students were interviewed about how difficult mathematical concept can be effectively explained to them to make them fully understand the concept, all the students felt that assignments were needed in addition to lecture and simulation to fully comprehend the subject material. The survey also revealed that the students were not too comfortable using Matlab simulation package alone since they felt that Matlab was too mathematical and did not help them to visualize the circuit. Almost all the student felt that only after obtaining the transfer function, would it be easy to use the Matlab software to plot the other curves and plots they wanted to observe for example the bode plot, rootlocus, etc. in which some of these functions are not available in the Multisim software. The survey also revealed that 93% of the students both previously attending and those presently attending the course felt that the simulation will actually help them to build confidence in analyzing other circuits. In addition, when asked about the usage of colours, 73% of the students felt that by using the different colours, it will help then visualize the mathematical solutions with greater ease and it allowed a much deeper understanding of the underlying concepts. CONCLUSION Simulation exercises is a very important part of electrical and electronics engineering programs. Simulation exercises not only provide verification of the basic theory but it also reinforces the underlying principles and application of logical analysis to solve real-world problems. Studies that were carried out by both Swain and Anderson (2008) stated that students who used simulation prior to conducting actual engineering experiments performed better than the students who conducted the laboratory experiments without conducting simulation first. The exercise we carried out not only agrees with their conclusion but also reinforces that simulation enhances the teaching and learning experience of the students as the students felt that simulation will help them improve their overall understanding. REFERENCES Avitabile, P. and Hodgkins, J. (2006) Development of Visualization Tools for Resposnse of 1st and 2nd Order Dynamic Systems, Paper 2006-707; Proceedings of the 2006 American
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Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition , American Society for Engineering. Dong, W. (2004) Improving students lifelong learning skills in Circuit Analysis, The China Papers. Swain, N. K. and Anderson, J. A. (2008) Role of Simulation Software in Enhancing Student Learning in Computer Organization and Microcontroller Courses, Paper 135, ENT 207; Proceedings of The 2008 IAJC-IJME International Conference.

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