Analysis and design of control systems with saturating actuators

This dissertation systematically addresses some classical sues in the analysis and design of linear control systems subject to saturation nonlinearities. These issues include (1) Description of the null controllable region; (2) The stabilization on the null controllable region; (3) Stabilization with guaranteed regional performance; (4) Disturbance rejection; (5) Output regulation.; We give explicit descriptions of the null controllable regions of general linear systems with bounded controls. For systems with two or less anti-stable poles, simple controllers are constructed to achieve semi-global stabilization on the null controllable region. For more general systems, some optimization based methods are developed for designing linear feedback laws that result in large domains of attraction and good closed-loop performances. By resorting to nonlinear feedback laws, it is shown that the domain of attraction can be made arbitrarily close to the null controllable region with a guaranteed regional performance.; We formulate and give solutions to two disturbance rejection problems. For the first problem, the disturbance enters the system before the saturating actuator and we construct controllers that achieve semi-global practical stabilization on the null controllable region. For the second problem, the disturbance enters the system after the saturating actuator, and we develop feedback laws that achieve disturbance rejection with guaranteed stability requirements.; Finally, we study the problem of output regulation. The asymptotically regulatable region is characterized and feedback laws are constructed that achieve output regulation on the asymptotically regulatable region.