Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems

This is an excellent reference. My graduate-level aerospace control systems course is not taught directly out of the book -- in fact, we don't even have a required text -- but my professor swears by it. (Although there is some bias, since one of the authors was his professor when he was doing his graduate work!) It literally saved my grade come midterm time!

The Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems book from Franklin is an outstanding book. The most impressive feature is how clear the ideas and methods are explained. This book is greatly recommended for professors, students and researchers.

As a student learning this material, I have to say that from beginning to end, just about everything you'd want to know about control system design is in this book. Well compiled and collated off, with enough pictures to satisfy any engineer, I've got the important pages tabbed and it's now a part of my permanent reference library. The examples and the motivations behind everything done in the book are enough to get you designing your own feedback control systems. A few things you should know: the book examples jump around a LOT. Examples from chapter 7 draw on diagrams and examples in chapter 4, etc... and consecutive pages will often refer to figures and diagrams that aren't even on the current page, nor will they tell you where they are sometimes. I found myself flipping back and for and back and forth often when trying to follow examples or read chapters. Second, I really hope you aren't trying to learn control system design without MATLAB. All I gotta say is... DON'T. For example: the intricacies of linear quadratic regulator theory are not as important as learning how to apply it in a design project. Plus, the iterative nature of control system design means that you will want to save your process as an m-file. Don't try this stuff without a copy of, or access to a copy of MATLAB.

It is a nice book for experienced control system engineers

It's a great book, easily to read and with clear examples. It is easy to keep an overall view of the discussed theory. The link with MATLAB is also very practical. And I know some other Dutch students agree with me!