Stability and H∞ performance of multiple‐delay systems with successive delay components

This paper presents a new model for linear time‐delay systems with multiple delayed states where each delay contains finite number of successive components with different time‐varying properties, referred to as multiple‐delay system with successive time‐varying delay components (MDSSTDCs). General stability result and H_∞ performance conditions, under which the MDSSTDCs are asymptotically stable with certain H_∞ disturbance attenuation level, are derived by exploiting a general Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and by making use of novel techniques for time‐delay systems. The result is applied to two special types of time‐delay systems frequently used in engineering applications and corresponding conditions for stability and H_∞ performance are obtained. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.