State Variables

The state variables are they key to state-space models. They are the minimum set of variables that can completely describe the system. One way to determine how many states a system has is to count the number of objects in the system that store energy. In a spring-mass system the spring stores potential energy, and the mass stores kinetic energy. State variables are coordinates in the state-space that are described by the state-vector. Because this vector can be described with any 2 combinations of linearly-independent variables we often re-define the state-variables into another form that makes calculations easier. This is the same as choosing a different basis for our state vector.

[[Spring Mass System]] – example of kinetic and potential energy storage
[[Modal Form]] – diagonalizing the A matrix of a state-space system
[[Buckingham Pi Theorem]] – variation of the re-basising of state variables
[[Full-Range Gas Turbine Modeling]] – you can non-dimensionalize the variables to account for changes in the inlet conditions.

  • IntroductionStateSpaceEquations

Backlinks:

[[Vector Basis]]