1. Introduction

Dead times appear in many processes in industry. They are caused by some of the following phenomena:

The time needed to transport mass, energy or information.

The accumulation of time lags in a great number of low-order systems connected in series.

The required processing time for sensors, such as analysers; controllers that need some time to implement a complicated control algorithm or process.


\[\tau_d = \frac{\text{distance}}{\text{velocity}}\]



\[G(s) = \frac{Y(s)}{X(s)} = e^{-\tau_d s}\]