Stability and Root Locus

Routh- Hurwitz Criterion

 Concept of Stability
A stable system is a dynamic system with a bounded (limited)
response to a bounded input. i.e the response does not grow
with time.
Stability of a feedback system is also defined by the location
of the poles of the closed loop transfer function. To obtain a
bounded response, poles of a closed loop system must lie in
left hand portion of s-plane diagram i.e. poles of a closed loop
system must be a negative real.
The system is said to be unstable if any of the roots of the
characteristic equation (poles) are in the right hand side
(positive real).
Routh–Hurwitz Stability Criterion

Routh- hurwitz is an important tool to

access the stability without computing
the values of the roots, and it’s
involving simple mathematics.
 Routh–Hurwitz Stability Criterion
• The CLTF of a feedback control systems is
•

• For stability, consider the characteristic

equation of the CLTF:
 Routh–Hurwitz Stability Criterion
• For stability, all the roots of the characteristic
equation must be negative real. If there is even one
positive root, system is unstable.
• Routh-Hurwitz stability criterion is a method of
analysing if there exist a positive roots (hence:
unstable) without calculating the actual value of the
roots.
• All the coefficients of characteristic equation must
have the same sign and nonzero for all the roots to be
in left- hand of s-plane.
 Routh Array
Routh approach is basically arranging the coefficients
of the characteristic equation into array known as
Routh- array: Routh array

Characteristic
Equation:
This array is continued horizontally and vertically until all the
coefficients are having zero value.
 Routh–Hurwitz Stability Criterion
• For stability, all coefficients are either positive or
negative.
• Routh- Hurwitz criterion states that the number of
roots of D(s) with positive real parts is equals to
the number of changes in sign of the first column
of the Routh’s array, i.e. no changes in sign in the
first column for a stable system.
• There are two cases of interest: non-zero element
and one zero element on the first column of the
array.
EXAMPLES