Integrated design of robust fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control against simultaneous actuator and sensor faults

This paper investigates the problems of simultaneous actuator and sensor faults estimation, as well as the fault‐tolerant control scheme for a class of linear continuous‐time systems subject to external disturbances. First, the original system is transformed into a singular form by extending the actuator fault and sensor fault to be parts of the new state. Then, a new estimation technique named non‐fragile proportional‐derivative observer is designed for the singular system to achieve simultaneous estimations of states and faults. With the obtained estimations information, an integrated design of the non‐fragile output feedback fault‐tolerant controller is explored to compensate for the effect of faults by stabilizing the closed‐loop system. Finally, a simulation study on a two‐stage chemical reactor with recycle streams is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Integrated fault detection and control for two‐dimensional Markovian jump systems

This paper is concerned with the problem of integrated fault detection and control for a class of two‐dimensional (2D) discrete‐time Markovian jump systems. The mathematical model of 2D Markovian jump systems is established upon the well‐known Roesser model, and a faults detection filter/controller is proposed to detect faults and meet some control specifications simultaneously. In this strategy, it takes into account both the fault detection objective and the control objective simultaneously through certain performance levels. The integrated design problem is then formulated as a multi‐objective optimization problem, which is nonconvex in essence. Furthermore, a two‐step algorithm is developed to solve this nonconvex problem. Sufficient conditions for existence of the desired fault detection filter/controller are established in terms of LMIs. A numerical example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Distributed adaptive fault‐tolerant leader‐following formation control of nonlinear uncertain second‐order multi‐agent systems

This paper presents a distributed integrated fault diagnosis and accommodation scheme for leader‐following formation control of a class of nonlinear uncertain second‐order multi‐agent systems. The fault model under consideration includes both process and actuator faults, which may evolve abruptly or incipiently. The time‐varying leader communicates with a small subset of follower agents, and each follower agent communicates to its directly connected neighbors through a bidirectional network with possibly asymmetric weights. A local fault diagnosis and accommodation component are designed for each agent in the distributed system, which consists of a fault detection and isolation module and a reconfigurable controller module comprised of a baseline controller and two adaptive fault‐tolerant controllers, activated after fault detection and after fault isolation, respectively. By using appropriately the designed Lyapunov functions, the closed‐loop stability and asymptotic convergence properties of the leader‐follower formation are rigorously established under different modes of the fault‐tolerant control system.     

Fault detection for output feedback control systems with actuator stuck faults: A steady‐state‐based approach

The paper studies the fault detection problem for output feedback control systems with bounded disturbances and nonzero constant reference inputs. A steady‐state‐based approach is proposed which can be used to detect small actuator stuck faults including actuator outage (the stuck value is zero). These small stuck faults, especially the outage faults, cannot be detected effectively using the existing techniques. A dynamic output feedback controller and a weighting matrix are designed simultaneously. The dynamic output feedback controller stabilizes the closed‐loop system for both fault‐free and faulty cases and attenuates the effects of disturbances. By manipulating the steady‐state values of system states with the detection weighting matrix, a residual is then generated, through which actuator stuck faults including actuator outages can be detected effectively. Simulation results are included to demonstrate our design procedure. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensor‐fault tolerance using robust MPC with set‐based state estimation and active fault isolation

In this paper, a sensor fault‐tolerant control scheme using robust model predictive control (MPC) and set‐theoretic fault detection and isolation (FDI) is proposed. The robust MPC controller is used to control the plant in the presence of process disturbances and measurement noises while implementing a mechanism to tolerate faults. In the proposed scheme, fault detection (FD) is passive based on interval observers, while fault isolation (FI) is active by means of MPC and set manipulations. The basic idea is that for a healthy or faulty mode, one can construct the corresponding output set. The size and location of the output set can be manipulated by adjusting the size and center of the set of plant inputs. Furthermore, the inputs can be adjusted on‐line by changing the input‐constraint set of the MPC controller. In this way, one can design an input set able to separate all output sets corresponding to all considered healthy and faulty modes from each other. Consequently, all the considered healthy and faulty modes can be isolated after detecting a mode changing while preserving feasibility of MPC controller. As a case study, an electric circuit is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A low‐complexity design for distributed containment control of networked pure‐feedback systems and its application to fault‐tolerant control

This paper addresses a low‐complexity distributed containment control problem and its extension to fault‐tolerant control for networked nonlinear pure‐feedback systems under a directed graph. The multiple dynamic leaders are neighbors of only a subset of the followers described by completely non‐affine multi‐input multi‐output pure‐feedback dynamics. It is assumed that all followers' nonlinearities are heterogeneous and unknown. The proposed containment controller is implemented by using only error surfaces integrated by performance bounding functions and does not require any differential equations for compensating uncertainties and faults. Thus, compared with the previous containment control approaches for multi‐agent systems with unknown non‐affine nonlinearities, the distributed containment control structure is simplified. In addition, it is shown that the proposed control scheme can be applied to the fault‐tolerant containment control problem in the presence of unexpected system and actuator faults, without reconstructing any control structure. It is shown from Lyapunov stability theorem that all followers nearly converge to the dynamic convex hull spanned by the dynamic leaders and the containment control errors are preserved within certain given predefined bounds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrated fault detection system design for linear discrete time‐varying systems with bounded power disturbances

This paper investigates the problem of an integrated fault detection system design for linear discrete time‐varying systems with bounded power disturbances. In the integrated design of residual generator and evaluator, an approximated energy constraint is first imposed on the bounded power disturbances, and then selected by solving a min–max problem to achieve minimal‐size set of undetectable faults under the condition of zero false alarms. To tackle the problem that the computational burden involved in solving the min–max optimization grows with time, the moving horizon method is proposed. The proposed approach in this paper has two advantages: (i) the approximated energy constraint on bounded power disturbances is explicitly selected as a min–max solution in the integrated design to improve fault detection rate; by contrast, when directly applying any existing fault detection method to the case of bounded power disturbances, a predefined approximated energy constraint is implicitly introduced without considering fault detection performance; (ii) the design objective of the proposed approach can choose to consider faults only in the recent time horizon rather than faults in the complete time horizon; this strategy enhances detection performance of recent faults and benefits early fault detection, but has not been considered by existing fault detection methods. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant quantized control of nonlinear systems with constraints on system behaviors and states

In this work, we develop a robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control scheme for a class of input‐quantized strict‐feedback nonlinear systems in the presence of error/state constraints and actuation faults. The problem is rather complicated yet challenging if nonparametric uncertainties and unknown quantization parameters as well as time‐varying yet completely undetectable actuation faults are involved in the considered systems. Compared with the most existing approaches in the literature, the proposed control exhibits several attractive advantages: (1) upon using a nonlinear decomposition for quantized input and employing the robust technique for actuation fault, not only the exact knowledge of quantization parameters are not required, but also the actuation fault can be easily compensated since neither fault detection and diagnosis/fault detection and identification nor controller reconfiguration is needed; (2) based on the error/state‐dependent unified nonlinear function, the constraints on tracking error and system states are directly handled and the cases with or without constraints can also be addressed in a unified manner without changing the control structure; and (3) the utilization of unified nonlinear function‐based dynamic surface control not only avoids the problem of the explosion of complexity in traditional backstepping design, but also bypasses the demanding feasibility conditions of virtual controllers. Furthermore, by using the Lyapunov analysis, it is ensured that all signals in the closed‐loop systems are uniformly ultimately bounded. The effectiveness of the developed control algorithm is confirmed by numerical simulations.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant control of uncertain linear systems via sliding‐mode output feedback

This paper is concerned with the robust adaptive fault‐tolerant compensation control problem via sliding‐mode output feedback for uncertain linear systems with actuator faults and exogenous disturbances. Mismatched disturbance attenuation is performed via H_∞ norm minimization. By incorporating the matrix full‐rank factorization technique with sliding surface design successfully, the total failure of certain actuators can be coped with, under the assumption that redundancy is available in the system. Without the need for a fault detection and isolation mechanism, an adaptive sliding mode controller, where the gain of the nonlinear unit vector term is updated automatically to compensate the effects of actuator faults, is designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability and adaptive H_∞ performance of closed‐loop systems. The effectiveness of the proposed design method is illustrated via a B747‐100/200 aircraft model. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking control of multiple time‐delays systems with mismatched parameter uncertainties and actuator failures

This study deals with the problem of robust adaptive fault‐tolerant tracking for uncertain systems with multiple delayed state perturbations, mismatched parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults including loss of effectiveness, outage, and stuck. It is assumed that the upper bounds of the delayed state perturbations, the external disturbances and the unparameterizable time‐varying stuck faults are unknown. Then, by estimating online such unknown bounds and on the basis of the updated values of these unknown bounds from the adaptive mechanism, a class of memoryless state feedback fault‐tolerant controller with switching signal function is constructed for robust tracking of dynamical signals. Furthermore, by making use of the proposed adaptive robust tracking controller, the tracking error can be guaranteed to be asymptotically zero in spite of multiple delayed state perturbations, mismatched parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults. In addition, it is also proved that the solutions with tracking error of resulting adaptive closed‐loop system are uniformly bounded. Finally, a simulation example for B747‐100/200 aircraft system is provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed fault‐tolerant design approach. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fault detection model‐based controller for process systems

This paper develops a model‐based control system for fault detection and controller reconfiguration using stochastic model predictive control (MPC). The system can determine online the optimal control actions, detect faults quickly, and reconfigure the controller accordingly. Such a system can perform its function correctly in the presence of internal faults. A fault detection model based (FDMB) controller consists of two main parts: the first is fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) and the second is controller reconfiguration (CR). Systems subject to such abrupt failures are modeled as stochastic hybrid systems with variable‐structure. This paper deals with three challenging issues: design of the fault‐model set; estimation of hybrid multiple models; and stochastic MPC of hybrid multiple models. For the first issue, we propose a simple scheme for designing a fault model set based on random variables. For the second issue, we consider and select a fast and reliable FDD system applied to the above model set. Finally, we develop a stochastic MPC scheme for multiple model CR with soft switching signals based on the weighted probabilities of the outputs of different models. Simulations for the proposed FDMB controller are illustrated and analyzed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Observer‐Based Adaptive Output Feedback Fault Tolerant Control for Nonlinear Hydro‐Turbine Governing System with State Delay

This paper focuses on the problem of adaptive output feedback fault tolerant control for a nonlinear hydro‐turbine governing system. A dynamic mathematical model of the system is established, which aims to investigate the dynamic performance of the model under servomotor delay and actuator faults. Then, a fault estimation adaptive observer is proposed to achieve online real‐time diagnosis of system faults. Based on the online fault estimation information, an observer‐based adaptive output feedback fault tolerant controller is designed. Furthermore, under reasonable assumptions, the results demonstrate that the closed‐loop control system can achieve global asymptotic stability by Lyapunov function. Finally, the numerical simulation results are presented to indicate the satisfaction control effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Adaptive logic‐based switching fault‐tolerant controller design for nonlinear uncertain systems

This paper deals with the problem of fault‐tolerant control (FTC) for a class of nonlinear uncertain systems against actuator faults using adaptive logic‐based switching control method. The uncertainties under consideration are assumed to be dominated by a bounding system which is linear in growth in the unmeasurable states but can be a continuous function of the system output, with unknown growth rates. Several types of common actuator faults, e.g., bias, loss‐of‐effectiveness, stuck and hard‐over faults are integrated by a unified fault model. By utilizing a novel adaptive logic‐based switching control scheme, the actuator faults can be detected and automatically accommodated by switching from the stuck actuator to the healthy or even partly losing‐effectiveness one with bias, in the presence of large parametric uncertainty. In particular, two switching logics for updating the gain in the output feedback controllers are designed to ensure the global stability of the nominal (fault‐free) system and the boundedness of all closed‐loop signals of the faulty system, respectively. Two simulation examples of an aircraft wing model and a single‐link flexible‐joint robot are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed FTC controller. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fault‐tolerant reference generation for model predictive control with active diagnosis of elevator jamming faults

This paper focuses on the longitudinal control of an Airbus passenger aircraft in the presence of elevator jamming faults. In particular, in this paper, we address permanent and temporary actuator jamming faults using a novel reconfigurable fault‐tolerant predictive control design. Due to their different consequences on the available control authority and fault duration, the above 2 actuator jamming faults need to be distinguished so that appropriate control reconfigurations can be adopted accordingly. Their similarity in symptoms, however, prevents an effective discrimination of the root cause of the jamming when using only a passive fault‐diagnosis approach. Hence, we propose the use of model predictive control (MPC) as a fault‐tolerant controller to actively help the fault‐detection (FD) unit discriminate between a permanent and a temporary jamming fault, while ensuring the performance of the aircraft. The MPC controller and the FD unit closely interact during the detection and diagnosis phases. In particular, every time a fault is detected, the FD module commands the MPC controller to perform a predefined sequence of reconfigurations to diagnose the root cause of the fault. An artificial reference signal that accounts for changes in the actuator operative ranges is used to guide the system through this sequence of reconfigurations. Our strategy is demonstrated on an Airbus passenger aircraft simulator.     

Integrated fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control for uncertain Lipschitz nonlinear systems

This paper proposes an integrated fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control (FTC) design for Lipschitz non‐linear systems subject to uncertainty, disturbance, and actuator/sensor faults. A non‐linear unknown input observer without rank requirement is developed to estimate the system state and fault simultaneously, and based on these estimates an adaptive sliding mode FTC system is constructed. The observer and controller gains are obtained together via H_∞ optimization with a single‐step linear matrix inequality (LMI) formulation so as to achieve overall optimal FTC system design. A single‐link manipulator example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improved adaptive fault‐tolerant control design for hypersonic vehicle based on interval type‐2 T‐S model

This study proposes an improved adaptive fault estimation and accommodation algorithm for a hypersonic flight vehicle that uses an interval type‐2 Takagi‐Sugeno fuzzy model and a quantum switching module. First, an interval type‐2 Takagi‐Sugeno fuzzy model for the hypersonic flight vehicle system with elevator faults is developed to process the nonlinearity and parameter uncertainties. An improved adaptive fault estimation algorithm is then constructed by adding an adjustable parameter. The quantum switching module is also applied to the estimation part to select an appropriate algorithm in different fault cases. The estimation results from the given fuzzy observer are used to design a type‐2 fuzzy fault accommodation controller to stabilize the fuzzy system. The stability of the proposed scheme is analyzed using the Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, the validity and availability of the method are verified by a series of comparisons on numerical simulation results.     

Integrated fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control for stochastic systems with Brownian motions

This paper presents an integrated robust fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control technique for stochastic systems subjected to Brownian parameter perturbations. The augmented system approach, unknown input observer method, and optimization technique are integrated to achieve robust simultaneous estimates of the system states and the means of faults concerned. Meanwhile, a robust fault‐tolerant control strategy is developed by using actuator and sensor signal compensation techniques. Stochastic linear time‐invariant systems, stochastic systems with Lipschitz nonlinear constraint, and stochastic systems with quadratic inner‐bounded nonlinear constraint are respectively investigated, and the corresponding fault‐tolerant control algorithms are addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed fault‐tolerant control techniques is demonstrated via the drivetrain system of a 4.8 MW benchmark wind turbine, a 3‐tank system, and a numerical nonlinear model.     

Retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking control design of an unmanned quadrotor helicopter considering actuator dynamics

This paper presents a retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking control (FTTC) design method with application to an unmanned quadrotor helicopter (UQH). The proposed retrofit fault‐tolerant tracking controller is developed to accommodate loss‐of‐effectiveness faults in the actuators of UQH. First, a state feedback tracking controller acting as the normal controller is designed to guarantee the stability and satisfactory performance of UQH in the absence of actuator faults, while actuator dynamics of UQH are also considered in the controller design. Then, a retrofit control mechanism with integration of an adaptive fault estimator and an adaptive fault compensator is devised against the adverse effects of actuator faults. Next, the proposed retrofit FTTC strategy, which is synthesized by the normal controller and an additional reconfigurable fault compensating mechanism, takes over the control of the faulty UQH to asymptotically stabilize the closed‐loop system with an acceptable performance degradation in the presence of actuator faults. Finally, both numerical simulations and practical experiments are conducted in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed FTTC methodology on the asymptotic convergence of tracking error for several combinations of loss‐of‐effectiveness faults in actuators.