An Investigation of Stability, Controllability and Observability of a Three Degree of Freedom Translational Mechanical System using State Space Approach

State-space modelling approach which is essentially time-domain developed in the late 1960s is a new approach to the analysis and design of complex control systems. Several researches have carried out modelling and analysis of mechanical systems with a number of degrees of freedom of movement using state space approach among which is the work of Sivak and Darina (2012) who modelled a system with two degrees of freedom. In this paper, therefore, we provide an extension of the work of Sivak and Darina to model and analyse a three degree of freedom translational mechanical system using state-space approach. The system was first presented in equivalent free body diagrams, then Newton's second law of motion was used to derive its equations of motion. The State-space formulation in the controllable canonical form obtained from the time-domain differential equations is adopted and the Laplace transform method was used in the analysis to determine the poles (natural frequencies) of the system using two numerical examples in MATLAB software. The software was also used to determine the controllability and observability matrices of the system. The stability, controllability and observability of the system were then discussed from the poles, controllability matrix and observability matrix respectively. Tables of numerical values and line graphs were used to present the results obtained from the analysis. Finally, in these results, the system was found to be stable, controllable and observable suggesting that a state feedback ( pole placement ) control design for the system is possible.