Popov E. The Dynamics of Automatic Control Systems 1962

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Professor Popov’s book on the theory of servomechanisms and control systems will be of interest to English readers in showing the meticulous detail into which Russian engineers and students are led when discussing these subjects. A few standard and useful examples are taken and form the basis for discussion at all levels, from the most elementary to the most complete and advanced, so that a sense of continuity is preserved throughout the volume. The translation preserves much of the Russian sentence structure and the editor did not find it possible to alter this without a more or less complete rewriting of the translator’s manuscript. Neverthe­ less, it is hoped that a readable result has been obtained and that the spirit of the whole is faithful to that of the original. The wide study of the theory of automatic control in our insti­ tutions of higher education is a very recent development. Many engineers therefore have come to study it only when already engaged in practical work. The present book has the aim of assisting these broad circles of engineers and students to acquaint themselves in the most accessible form with the foundations of the theory of automatic control, in which the main role is played by the dynam­ ics of control systems. Following the aim of the most accessible development, the author has consciously tried to reduce to a minimum the use of operational calculus and the theory of functions of the complex variable and everywhere, where possible, to confine himself to the use of the symbolic operational method as a means of simplifying the notation and manipulation of differential equations. The book presents those theoretical methods of analysis and synthesis of automatic control systems common to systems of various physical natures and designs. The concrete examples presented in the book, therefore, by no means pretend to reproduce the designs of contemporary automatic control systems. They will be only the simplest functional circuits serving to illustrate the principal ideas in the construction of automatic control systems and the application of the theoretical methods developed here. By analogy, the reader may then apply these ideaB and methods to the concrete automatic control systems of interest to him. Attempting to describe in detail the fundamental results of the theory of automatic control, the author has been forced to limit himself to brief remarks on a number of special questions. Statistical methods and questions of representation of automatic control systems have been completely neglected here. Each of these important fields is so specialised that it may constitute the subject of separate books