Routh’s stability criterion

Stability is one of the important topics in which the control systems engineer is
interested. A lot of books are also devoted to study this topic.

A control system becomes unstable as soon as if any of the closed loop poles is
located in the right-half of the complex plane.

The closed-loop poles may be found by solving the characteristic equation

1 + GH(s) = 0

If the characteristic equation represents a fairly simple system, for example is of order
1 or 2, the closed-loop poles may be found by direct solution. For higher order
system, however, solving the characteristic equation becomes tedious and usually
requires numerical methods.

However, it is not necessary to actually solve the characteristic equation to determine

stability, only to find out if there are any roots with positive real parts. Routh’s
method becomes useful, since it determines the number of roots located in the right-
hand half of the complex plane without actually solving the characteristic equation.

The method may be used by the following steps;

Step 1: write the characteristic equation in the polynomial form

a o s n + a1 s n −1 + a 2 s n −2 + .......... ........ + a n −1 s + a n = 0

If the characteristic equation has a negative or zero coefficient, the system is unstable.
If all coefficients are positive, go to Step 2 for further analysis on the stability of the
system.

Step 2: Construct the Routh array in the following manner

s n : a0 a2 a4 a6 . . . .
n−1
s : a1 a3 a5 a7 . . . .
n−2
s : b1 b2 b3 b4 . . . .
n−3
s : c1 c2 c3 c4 . . . .
n−4
s : d1 d2 d3 d4 . . . .
...... : .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
...... : .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
s 2 : e1 e2 e3 ⋅ . . . .
1
s : f1 f2 ⋅ ⋅ . . . .
0
s : g1 ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ . . . .
The coefficients of the first two rows are obtained directly from the characteristic
equation while the remaining coefficients of each subsequent row are obtained from
the two rows immediately preceding it. The remaining coefficients are derived as
follows:

a1a 2 − a 0 a3
b1 = ,
a1
a a − a 0 a5
b2 = 1 4
a1

a1 a 6 − a 0 a 7
b3 =
a1

All coefficients of the third row are computed until they become zero. The next row is
computed from the previous two rows using the same pattern of cross-multiplying the
coefficients:

b1 a3 − a1b2
c1 =
b1
b a − a1b3
c2 = 1 5
b1

b1a7 − a1b4
c3 =
b1

The next row is computed from the previous two rows in a similar manner:

c1b2 − b1c 2
d1 =
c1
c b − b1c3
d2 = 1 3
c1
c b − b1c 4
d3 = 1 4
c1

The process is continued until all rows have been completed down to the terms in row
s0. In practice, the array becomes triangular, reducing to single element in the last
row. Once completed, the stability of the system may be determined from Routh’s
criterion, which states that the number of closed-loop poles in the right-hand half
complex plane is equal to the number of sign changes of the elements of the first
column of Routh’s array.
Example.

Read and understand example 5-12 pp224 (OGATA)

TUTORIAL PROBLEMS PP277 B-5-20, B-5-21