AfterasurveypaperbyUtkininthelate1970s, slidingmodecontrolmeth- ologies emerged as an e?ective tool to tackle uncertainty and disturbances which are inevitable in most of the practical systems. Sliding mode control is a particular class of variable structure control which was introduced by Emel'yanov and his colleagues. The design paradigms of sliding mode c- trol has now become a mature design technique for the design of robust c- troller of uncertain system. In sliding mode technique, the state trajectory of the system is constrained on a chosen manifold (or within some neighb- hood thereof) by an appropriatecontrolaction. This manifold is also called a switching surface or a sliding surface. During sliding mode, system dynamics is governed by the chosen manifold which results in a well celebrated inva- ance property towards certain classes of disturbance and model mismatches. The purpose of this monograph is to give a di?erent dimension to sl- ing surface design to achieve high performance of the system. Design of the switching surface is vital because the closed loop dynamics is governed by the parameters of the sliding surface. Therefore sliding surface should be - signed to meet the closed loop speci?cations. Many systems demand high performance with robustness. To address this issue of achieving high perf- mance with robustness, we propose nonlinear surfaces for di?erent classes of systems. The nonlinear surface is designed such that it changes the system's closed-loop damping ratio from its initial low value to a ?nal high value.

Sliding mode control is a simple and yet robust control technique, where the system states are made to confine to a selected subset. With the increasing use of computers and discrete-time samplers in controller implementation in the recent past, discrete-time systems and computer based control have become important topics. This monograph presents an output feedback sliding mode control philosophy which can be applied to almost all controllable and observable systems, while at the same time being simple enough as not to tax the computer too much. It is shown that the solution can be found in the synergy of the multirate output sampling concept and the concept of discrete-time sliding mode control.

The sliding mode control paradigm has become a mature technique for the design of robust controllers for a wide class of systems including nonlinear, uncertain and time-delayed systems. This book is a collection of plenary and invited talks delivered at the 12th IEEE International Workshop on Variable Structure System held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India in January 2012. After the workshop, these researchers were invited to develop book chapters for this edited collection in order to reflect the latest results and open research questions in the area. The contributed chapters have been organized by the editors to reflect the various themes of sliding mode control which are the current areas of theoretical research and applications focus; namely articulation of the fundamental underpinning theory of the sliding mode design paradigm, sliding modes for decentralized system representations, control of time-delay systems, the higher order sliding mode concept, results applicable to nonlinear and underactuated systems, sliding mode observers, discrete sliding mode control together with cutting edge research contributions in the application of the sliding mode concept to real world problems. This book provides the reader with a clear and complete picture of the current trends in Variable Structure Systems and Sliding Mode Control Theory.

This book presents an overview over smart structures - its concepts, its active involvement in the vibration control, their applications and the extensive research work done.

Control analysis and design of large nuclear reactors requires a suitable mathematical model representing the steady state and dynamic behavior of the reactor with reasonable accuracy. This task is, however, quite challenging because of several complex dynamic phenomena existing in a reactor. Quite often, the models developed would be of prohibitively large order, non-linear and of complex structure not readily amenable for control studies. Moreover, the existence of simultaneously occurring dynamic variations at different speeds makes the mathematical model susceptible to numerical ill-conditioning, inhibiting direct application of standard control techniques. This monograph introduces a technique for mathematical modeling of large nuclear reactors in the framework of multi-point kinetics, to obtain a comparatively smaller order model in standard state space form thus overcoming these difficulties. It further brings in innovative methods for controller design for systems exhibiting multi-time-scale property, with emphasis on three-time-scale systems.