Stability Analysis of Multiple Time Delayed Systems Using the Direct Method

A novel treatment for the stability of a class of linear time invariant (LTI) systems with rationally independent multiple time delays using the Direct Method (DM) is studied. Since they appear in many practical applications in the systems and control community, this class of dynamics has attracted considerable interest. The stability analysis is very complex because of the infinite dimensional nature (even for single delay) of the dynamics and furthermore the multiplicity of these delays. The stability problem is much more challenging compared to the TDS with commensurate time delays (where time delays have rational relations). It is shown in an earlier publication of the authors that the DM brings a unique, exact and structured methodology for the stability analysis of commensurate time delayed cases. The transition from the commensurate time delays to multiple delay case motivates our study. It is shown that the DM reveals all possible stability regions in the space of multiple time delays. The systems that are considered do not have to possess stable behavior for zero delays. We present a numerical example on a system, which is considered “prohibitively difficult” in the literature, just to exhibit the strengths of the new procedure.