A new family of Routh approximants (Q677531)

The Routh approximation method, originally proposed by Hutton and Friedland in 1975, uses the Routh stability-test algorithm to generate reduced-order models for linear, time-invariant, continuous-time systems. In this paper, the authors generalize the impulse-response energy approximation technique of T. N. Lucas to obtain a new family of Routh approximants that retain various combinations of the energy parameters of the system. The new decomposition procedure allows one to build an energy decomposition tree for the system. The authors identify pertinent properties associated with this tree, and present a synthesis procedure to transform the energy decomposition tree to a tree of Routh approximants. It is indicated that the selection of Routh approximants based on the values of impulse-response energy is often inadequate because there may be a number of different Routh approximants with the same order and the same impulse-response energy. In such cases, an additional performance criterion, such as the integral of the squares error of the impulse response or the unit-step response, has to be used to select a suitable Routh approximant.