μ/Km-synthesis via bilinear matrix inequalities

The effectiveness of the bilinear matrix inequality (BMI) approach to μ/K_m-synthesis is investigated via two design examples based on the 1991 ACC benchmark problem. The first design example is a straightforward μ/K_m-synthesis problem. The second example concerns the μ/K_m-synthesis of one controller for two plants. The controller is constrained to be fourth order. For both examples, the BMI approach increases the guaranteed lower bounds to multivariable stability margins of the resulting closed loops by about 10% over the corresponding results from D-K iteration with no increase in controller order. A summary of the underlying theory and a conceptual outline of the BMI μ/K_m-synthesis algorithm are also included