Safe diagnosability for fault-tolerant supervision of discrete-event systems

The problem of achieving fault-tolerant supervision of discrete-event systems is considered from the viewpoint of safe and timely diagnosis of unobservable faults. To this end, the new property of safe diagnosability is introduced and studied. Standard definitions of diagnosability of discrete-event systems deal with the problem of detecting the occurrence of unobservable fault events using model-based inferencing from observed sequences of events. In safe diagnosability, it is required in addition that fault detection occur prior to the execution of a given set of forbidden strings in the failed mode of operation of the system. For instance, this constraint could be required to prevent local faults from developing into failures that could cause safety hazards. If the system is safe diagnosable, reconfiguration actions could be forced upon the detection of faults prior to the execution of unsafe behaviour, thus achieving the objective of fault-tolerant supervision. Necessary and sufficient conditions for safe diagnosability are derived. In addition, the problem of explicitly considering safe diagnosability in controller design, termed “active safe diagnosis problem”, is formulated and solved. A brief discussion of safe diagnosability for timed models of discrete-event systems is also provided.     

Fault tolerant control using virtual actuator for continuous‐time Lipschitz nonlinear systems

In this brief, we extend the existing results on fault tolerant control via virtual actuator approach to a class of systems with Lipschitz nonlinearities to maintain the closed‐loop stability after actuator faults. This generalization is established by relying on the input‐to‐state stability properties of cascaded systems. The virtual actuator block, placed between faulty plant and nominal controller, generates useful input signals for faulty plant by using output signals of the nominal controller to guarantee the closed‐loop stability in the presence of actuator faults. This design problem is reduced to a matrix inequality that can be turned to an LMI by fixing a variable to a constant value and solving the resulting LMI feasibility problem. The proposed fault tolerant control method is successfully evaluated using a nonlinear system. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multisensor fusion fault tolerant control

In this paper, a multisensor fusion fault tolerant control system with fault detection and identification via set separation is presented. The fault detection and identification unit verifies that for each sensor–estimator combination, the estimation tracking errors lie inside pre-computed sets and discards faulty sensors when their associated estimation tracking errors leave the sets. An active fault tolerant controller is obtained, where the remaining healthy estimates are combined using a technique based on the optimal fusion criterion in the linear minimum-variance sense. The fused estimates are then used to implement a state feedback tracking controller. We ensure closed-loop stability and performance under the occurrence of abrupt sensor faults. Experimental validation, illustrating the multisensor fusion fault tolerant control strategy is included.     

Fault Accommodation for a Class of Nonlinear Uncertain Systems With Event-Triggered Input

The event-triggered fault accommodation problem for a class of nonlinear uncertain systems is considered in this paper.The control signal transmission from the controller to the system is determined by an event-triggering scheme with relative and constant triggering thresholds.Considering the event-induced control input error and system fault threat,a novel eventtriggered active fault accommodation scheme is designed,which consists of an event-triggered nominal controller for the time period before detecting the occurrence of faults and an adaptive approximation based event-triggered fault accommodation scheme for handling the unknown faults after detecting the occurrence of faults.The closed-loop stability and inter-event time of the proposed fault accommodation scheme are rigorously analyzed.Special cases for the fault accommodation design under constant triggering threshold are also derived.An example is employed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed fault accommodation scheme.     

Robust control scheme based on an uncertainty and disturbance estimator for a quadrotor with motor failures

This paper proposes a new robust fault tolerant control architecture based on a disturbance observer. The control architecture is composed of a nominal controller and a rotor's fault observer capable to identify and estimate motors' degradation performance. Besides, is designed for a quadrotor vehicle and validated in critical and noncritical motors' failures. For both failure cases, each motor performance is analyzed to counteracted the failure and restore the system stability. If the practical stability is not recovered (critical case) a control reconfiguration is performed for safe landing. Experimental tests are carried out in real time to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture when confronting the stability of the system with aggressive disturbances or uncertainties.     

Differential geometry based active fault tolerant control for aircraft

This work shows how to use a differential geometry tool to design a novel nonlinear active fault tolerant flight control system for aircraft. The proposed control scheme consists of two main subsystems: a controller, which is designed for the nominal plant, and a fault detection and diagnosis module, which provides fault estimation. A further feedback loop exploits the fault estimation to accommodate faults affecting the system. The estimate convergence and the stability of the active fault tolerant flight controller are theoretically proved. Finally, high fidelity simulations show the effectiveness of the scheme.     

具有传输时延的网络控制系统故障估计与调节

In this paper, a method of fault estimation and fault tolerant control for networked control system (NCS) with transfer delay and process noise is presented. First, the networked control system is modeled as a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) discrete-time system with transfer delays, process noise, and model uncertainties. Under this model and under some conditions, a fault estimation method is proposed to estimate the system faults. On the basis of the information on fault estimation and the sliding mode control theory, a fault tolerant controller is designed to recover the system performance. Finally, simulation results are used to verify the efficiency of the method.     

Adaptive fault‐tolerant control for a nonlinear flexible aircraft wing system

Fault‐tolerant control problems have been extensively studied in all kinds of control systems. However, there is little work on fault‐tolerant control for distributed parameter systems. In this paper, a novel adaptive fault‐tolerant boundary control scheme is proposed for a nonlinear flexible aircraft wing system against actuator faults. The whole system is regarded as a distributed parameter system, and the dynamic model of the flexible wing system is described by a set of partial differential equations (PDEs) and ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The proposed controller is designed by using the Lyapunov's direct method and adaptive control strategies. Based on the online estimation of actuator faults, the adaptive controller parameters can update automatically to compensate the actuator faults of the system. Besides, a fault‐tolerant controller is also developed for this system in the presence of external disturbances. Differing from existing works about adaptive fault‐tolerant control, the adaptive controller presented in this paper is designed for a distributed parameter system. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.     

具有传输时延的网络控制系统故障估计与调节

In this paper,a method of fault estimation and fault tolerant control for networked control system (NCS) with transfer delay and process noise is presented.First,the networked control system is modeled as a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) discrete-time system with transfer delays,process noise,and model uncertainties.Under this model and under some conditions, a fault estimation method is proposed to estimate the system faults.On the basis of the information on fault estimation and the sliding mode control theory,a fault tolerant controller is designed to recover the system performance. Finally, simulation results are used to verify the efficiency of the method.     

Fault-tolerant control of linear systems using adaptive virtual actuator

In this paper, design and development of fault-tolerant control (FTC) is investigated for linear systems subject to loss of effectiveness and time-varying additive actuator faults as well as an external disturbance using the fault-hiding approach. The main aim of this approach is to keep the nominal controller and to design a virtual actuator that is inserted between the faulty plant and the nominal controller in order to hide actuator faults and disturbances from the nominal controller, and consequently the performance of the system before and after the occurrence of actuator faults is kept to be the same. The proposed adaptive virtual actuator does not require a separated fault detection, isolation and identification (FDII) unit and both state and output feedback cases are considered. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive virtual actuator in both cases.     

Supervisory fault tolerant control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems

This paper focuses on the design of a unique scheme that simultaneously performs fault isolation and fault tolerant control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with faults ranging over a finite cover. The proposed framework relies on a supervisory switching among a family of pre-computed candidate controllers without any additional model or filter. The states are ensured to be bounded during the switching delay, which ends when the correct stabilizing controller has been selected. Simulation results about a flexible joint robotic example illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Fault tolerant control with disturbance rejection and attenuation performance for systems with multiple disturbances

It is difficult to diagnose and accommodate the faults if disturbances and faults exist simultaneously in the controlled plants. In this paper, an anti‐disturbance fault tolerant control (FTC) scheme is presented for a class of nonlinear systems with both faults and multiple disturbances. The multiple disturbances are supposed to include two types including the uncertain modeled disturbances and norm bounded uncertain disturbances. A composite fault tolerant controller is constructed by integrating a fault accommodation from diagnosis observer with additional disturbance rejection and attenuation performance for two different types of disturbances. As a result, the fault can be accommodated and the multiple disturbances can be rejected and attenuated simultaneously. Simulations for a flight control system are given to show the efficiency of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

A Novel Robust Attitude Control for Quadrotor Aircraft Subject to Actuator Faults and Wind Gusts

A novel robust fault tolerant controller is developed for the problem of attitude control of a quadrotor aircraft in the presence of actuator faults and wind gusts in this paper. Firstly, a dynamical system of the quadrotor taking into account aerodynamical effects induced by lateral wind and actuator faults is considered using the Newton-Euler approach. Then, based on active disturbance rejection control (ADRC), the fault tolerant controller is proposed to recover faulty system and reject perturbations. The developed controller takes wind gusts, actuator faults and measurement noises as total perturbations which are estimated by improved extended state observer (ESO) and compensated by nonlinear feedback control law. So, the developed robust fault tolerant controller can successfully accomplish the tracking of the desired output values. Finally, some simulation studies are given to illustrate the effectiveness of fault recovery of the proposed scheme and also its ability to attenuate external disturbances that are introduced from environmental causes such as wind gusts and measurement noises.      

Fault tolerant control using sliding modes with on-line control allocation

This paper proposes an on-line sliding mode control allocation scheme for fault tolerant control. The effectiveness level of the actuators is used by the control allocation scheme to redistribute the control signals to the remaining actuators when a fault or failure occurs. The paper provides an analysis of the sliding mode control allocation scheme and determines the nonlinear gain required to maintain sliding. The on-line sliding mode control allocation scheme shows that faults and even certain total actuator failures can be handled directly without reconfiguring the controller. The simulation results show good performance when tested on different fault and failure scenarios.     

Event‐triggered fault‐tolerant control and scheduling codesign for nonlinear networked control systems with medium‐access constraint and packet disordering

This paper studies an event‐triggered communication, scheduling, and fault‐tolerant control codesign method for nonlinear networked control systems with medium‐access constraint, delay, and packet disordering using an adaptive approximation method and adaptive technique. By considering nonlinear dynamics and controller reconfiguration, a novel event‐triggering scheme with an adjustable triggering condition and adaptive triggering thresholds is proposed. The stochastic event‐driven actuator scheduling is investigated without the assumption that the controller can access the current modes of the actuators. By considering the Markovian delay and focusing on the transmitter node, a new packet reordering approach is used to cope with packet disordering. This paper proposes an active fault‐tolerant control method, in which the nominal controller is redesigned for the postfault plant by using the fault information provided by an estimator. It is proven that the estimation error of the estimator is uniformly bounded, the reconfigurable controller and event‐trigger ensure the boundedness in probability of the state tracking error before and after the fault occurrence in the presence of medium‐access constraint, delay, and packet disordering while reducing communication load. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated in the numerical example.     

Fault tolerant control for a dearomatisation process

In this paper, a fault tolerant control (FTC) for a dearomatisation process in the presence of faults in online product quality analysers is presented. The FTC consists of a fault detection system (FDI) and a logic for triggering predefined FTC actions. FDI is achieved by combining several process data driven approaches for detecting faults in online quality analysers. The FTC exploits the diagnostic information in adapting a quality controller (MPC) to the faulty situation by manipulating tuning parameters of the MPC to produce both proactive and reactive strategies. The proposed FTC was implemented, tested offline and validated onsite at the Naantali oil refinery. The successful testing and plant validation results are presented and discussed.     

Adaptive output feedback control using fault compensation and fault estimation for linear system with actuator failure

The problem of linear systems subject to actuator faults（outage,loss of efectiveness and stuck）,parameter uncertainties and external disturbances is considered.An active fault compensation control law is designed which utilizes compensation in such a way that uncertainties,disturbances and the occurrence of actuator faults are account for.The main idea is designing a robust adaptive output feedback controller by automatically compensating the fault dynamics to render the close-loop stability.According to the information from the adaptive mechanism,the updating control law is derived such that all the parameters of the unknown input signal are bounded.Furthermore,a disturbance decoupled fault reconstruction scheme is presented to evaluate the severity of the fault and to indicate how fault accommodation should be implemented.The advantage of fault compensation is that the dynamics caused by faults can be accommodated online.The proposed design method is illustrated on a rocket fairing structural-acoustic model.     

Novel MPC‐Based Fault Tolerant Tracking Control Against Sensor Faults

The problem of active fault‐tolerant tracking control with control input and system output constraints is studied for a class of discrete‐time systems subject to sensor faults. A time‐varying fault‐tolerant observer is first developed to estimate the real system state from the faulty sensor output and control input signals. Then by using the estimated state at each time step, a model predictive control (MPC)‐based fault‐tolerant tracking control scheme is presented to guarantee the desired tracking performance and the given input and output constraints on the faulty system. In comparison with many existing fault‐tolerant MPC methods, its main contribution is that the proposed state estimator is designed by the simple and online numerical computation to tolerate the possible sensor faults, so that the regular MPC algorithm without fault information can be adopted for the online calculation of fault‐tolerant control signal. The potential recursive infeasibility and computational complexity due to the faults are avoided in the scheme. Additionally, the closed‐loop stability of the post‐fault system is discussed. Simulative results of an electric throttle control system verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Sliding mode fault‐tolerant control of uncertain system: A delta operator approach

This paper is concerned with the sliding mode control of uncertain nonlinear systems against actuator faults and external disturbances based on delta operator approach. The nonlinearity, actuator fault, and external disturbance are considered in this study, and the bounds of Euclidean norms of the nonlinearity and the specific lower and upper bounds of the actuator faults and the disturbances are unknown knowledge. Our attention is mainly focused on designing a sliding mode fault‐tolerant controller to compensate the effects from the nonlinearity, unknown actuator fault, and external disturbance. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, a novel‐adaptive fault‐tolerant sliding mode control law is deigned such that the resulting closed loop delta operator system is finite‐time convergence and the actuator faults can be tolerated, simultaneously. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control design scheme. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.