Effect of closed-loop transfer function pole and zero locations on the transient response of linear control systems

THE ROOT LOCUS methods have in recent years gained a widespread popularity among control engineers engaged in the work of both analysis and synthesis. The reason for this is rather obvious; the root locus techniques give the system designer more information of the kind in which he is interested when analyzing a given system; when he is synthesizing a control network, these techniques permit him to build the desired characteristics into the system in a much more direct fashion than did the old frequency response techniques. The basis for this statement is that in the large majority of control systems, the transient, not the frequency, response is of overshadowing importance.