24.04.2013 Views

Nonlinear Control Sy.. - Free

Nonlinear Control Sy.. - Free

Nonlinear Control Sy.. - Free

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

74 CHAPTER 3. LYAPUNOV STABILITY I. AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS<br />

Figure 3.4: Pendulum without friction.<br />

other words, 52b shrinks to a single point as t -> oo. However, this is straightforward, since<br />

by assumption<br />

f7(x) < 0 in D.<br />

Thus, V (x) tends steadily to zero along the solutions of f (x). This completes the proof.<br />

Remarks: The first step when studying the stability properties of an equilibrium point<br />

consists of choosing a positive definite function Finding a positive definite function is<br />

fairly easy; what is rather tricky is to select a whose derivative along the trajectories<br />

near the equilibrium point is either negative definite, or semi definite. The reason, of course,<br />

is that is independent of the dynamics of the differential equation under study, while<br />

V depends on this dynamics in an essential manner. For this reason, when a function<br />

is proposed as possible candidate to prove any form of stability, such a is said to be a<br />

Lyapunov function candidate. If in addition happens to be negative definite, then V<br />

is said to be a Lyapunov function for that particular equilibrium point.<br />

3.4 Examples<br />

Example 3.4 (Pendulum Without Friction)<br />

Using Newton's second law of motion we have,<br />

ma = -mg sin 9<br />

a = la = l9

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!