Abstract: | In this paper the concepts of dissipativity and the exponential dissipativity are used to provide sufficient conditions for guaranteeing asymptotic stability of a time delay dynamical system. Specifically, representing a time delay dynamical system as a negative feedback interconnection of a finite‐dimensional linear dynamical system and an infinite‐dimensional time delay operator, we show that the time delay operator is dissipative with respect to a quadratic supply rate and with a storage functional involving an integral term identical to the integral term appearing in standard Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals. Finally, using stability of feedback interconnection results for dissipative systems, we develop sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of time delay dynamical systems. The overall approach provides a dissipativity theoretic interpretation of Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals for asymptotically stable dynamical systems with arbitrary time delay. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |