What comes up in the exam
Every past paper for ENGR5001 and the module it replaced, broken down by topic. "Typical marks" is the share of a paper each topic has carried on average, scaled to a 100-mark paper. Use it to spend your time where the marks are.
Topics by typical marks
| Topic | Typical marks | Came up | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proportional, integral, derivative and velocity action (P, PI, PD, PV, PID) | 9 | 9/9 | 20 |
| Poles, zeros, characteristic equation and stability | 8 | 9/9 | 28 |
| Feedback, open vs closed loop and the four control objectives | 7 | 7/9 | 13 |
| Mechanistic and data-based models (mechanical, electrical, thermal, hydraulic), assumptions, nonlinearities | 7 | 8/9 | 24 |
| Block diagram analysis and closed-loop Transfer Functions | 6 | 9/9 | 19 |
| Laplace transforms and Transfer Functions, steady state gain | 5 | 9/9 | 44 |
| Controller design by pole placement (gains for time constant, damping, natural frequency) | 5 | 8/9 | 9 |
| Frequency response, magnitude and phase, Bode diagrams | 5 | 7/9 | 11 |
| Generalised first and second order forms (gain, time constant, damping ratio, natural frequency) | 5 | 9/9 | 23 |
| Security of industrial control systems (vulnerabilities and mitigation) | 5 | 4/9 | 1 |
| Standard inputs, time response and graphical model estimation | 4 | 5/9 | 11 |
| Hurwitz stability criterion | 2 | 5/9 | 12 |
| Frequency response design (Nyquist, gain and phase margins) | 1 | 2/9 | 5 |
About 31 marks per paper in the old papers were on topics no longer taught. They are left out above.
Marks by paper
| Topic | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proportional, integral, derivative and velocity action (P, PI, PD, PV, PID) | 11 | 13 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 6 |
| Poles, zeros, characteristic equation and stability | 14 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 19 |
| Feedback, open vs closed loop and the four control objectives | 13 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 4 | 10 | ||
| Mechanistic and data-based models (mechanical, electrical, thermal, hydraulic), assumptions, nonlinearities | 5 | 14 | 8 | 3 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 5 | |
| Block diagram analysis and closed-loop Transfer Functions | 7 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 5 |
| Laplace transforms and Transfer Functions, steady state gain | 3 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Controller design by pole placement (gains for time constant, damping, natural frequency) | 7 | 3 | 12 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | |
| Frequency response, magnitude and phase, Bode diagrams | 7 | 5 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 10 | ||
| Generalised first and second order forms (gain, time constant, damping ratio, natural frequency) | 6 | 8 | 11 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| Security of industrial control systems (vulnerabilities and mitigation) | 11 | 4 | 3 | 24 | |||||
| Standard inputs, time response and graphical model estimation | 5 | 8 | 3 | 4 | 7 | ||||
| Hurwitz stability criterion | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | ||||
| Frequency response design (Nyquist, gain and phase margins) | 4 | 9 |
Cells show marks out of each paper's total. Columns in bold are current-spec papers. Click a year to open the paper.
ENGR5001 exam (50%) covers only the control part (Prof Taylor, Parts 1-5); the robotics part is a Lent-term team project assessed by coursework, so no robotics topics appear and the ENGR270 2026 paper has none. Old ENGR202 "Instrumentation and Control" papers are audited for their control section; instrumentation questions printed in the same paper are listed as off-syllabus (separate instrumentation papers, 2021 Part A and 2022 Part A, are skipped). Weeks follow the old-spec ENGR202 slide weeks; the ICS security week is a guess. 2017-2019 papers were answer-two-of-three per section, so totalMarks is the sum of all printed questions.