Aero‐Engine DCS Fault‐Tolerant Control with Markov Time Delay Based On Augmented Adaptive Sliding Mode Observer

With a focus on aero‐engine distributed control systems (DCSs) with Markov time delay, unknown input disturbance, and sensor and actuator simultaneous faults, a combined fault tolerant algorithm based on the adaptive sliding mode observer is studied. First, an uncertain augmented model of distributed control system is established under the condition of simultaneous sensor and actuator faults, which also considers the influence of the output disturbances. Second, an augmented adaptive sliding mode observer is designed and the linear matrix inequality (LMI) form stability condition of the combined closed‐loop system is deduced. Third, a robust sliding mode fault tolerant controller is designed based on fault estimation of the sliding mode observer, where the theory of predictive control is adopted to suppress the influence of random time delay on system stability. Simulation results indicate that the proposed sliding mode fault tolerant controller can be very effective despite the existence of faults and output disturbances, and is suitable for the simultaneous sensor and actuator faults condition.     

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.     

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.      

Observer‐based cooperative distributed fault‐tolerant model predictive control with imperfect network communication and asynchronous measurements

Intermittent actuator and sensor faults tolerant are simultaneously considered in a distributed control system with imperfect communication network. The asynchronous measurements of different output variables in one sampling period are synchronized through a novel two‐stage model‐based projection method. Different from centralized control network, in both layer‐to‐layer and in‐layer communication, the packet delay, loss and disordering are corrected by the predicted data from model predictive control. Moreover, a completely distributed state observer is established for both system states and sensor faults problem with bounded noise uncertainties. For the intermittent actuator faults, actuator plug‐and‐play design methods based on model predictive control has been introduced, making the actuator faults estimation omitted. The distributed stability conditions are derived for the proposed fault‐tolerant controller, and the online feasibility is explained in detail. Numerical simulation is given to verify the design procedure.     

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.     

Elegant antidisturbance fault‐tolerant control for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances

In this article, the elegant antidisturbance fault‐tolerant control (EADFTC) problem is studied for a class of stochastic systems in the simultaneous presence of multiple heterogeneous disturbances and time‐varying faults. The multiple heterogeneous disturbances include white noise, norm bounded uncertain disturbances and uncertain modeled disturbances with multiple nonlinearities and unknown amplitudes, frequencies, and phases. The time‐varying fault signals are caused by lose efficacy of actuator. To online estimate uncertain modeled disturbances and time‐varying faults, a novel composite observer structure consisting of the adaptive nonlinear disturbance observer and the fault diagnosis observer is constructed. The novel EADFTC strategy is proposed by integrating composite observer structure with adaptive disturbance observer‐based control theory and H_∞ technology. It is proved that all the signals of closed‐loop system are asymptotically bounded in mean square under the circumstances of multiple heterogeneous disturbances and time‐varying faults occur simultaneously. Finally, the effectiveness and availability of proposed strategy are demonstrated by means of the numerical simulation and a doubly fed induction generators system simulation, respectively.     

Adaptive disturbance observer‐based finite‐time continuous fault‐tolerant control for reentry RLV

The control effectors of reusable launch vehicle (RLV) can produce significant perturbations and faults in reentry phase. Such a challenge imposes tight requirements to enhance the robustness of vehicle autopilot. Focusing on this problem, a novel finite‐time fault‐tolerant control strategy is proposed for reentry RLV in this paper. The key of this strategy is to design an adaptive‐gain multivariable finite‐time disturbance observer (FDO) to estimate the synthetical perturbation with unknown bounds, which is composed of model uncertainty, external disturbance, and actuator fault considered as the partial loss of actuator effectiveness in this work. Then, combined with the finite‐time high‐order observer and differentiator, a continuous homogeneous second‐order sliding mode controller based on the terminal sliding mode and super‐twisting algorithm is designed to achieve a fast and accurate RLV attitude tracking with chattering attenuation. The main features of the integrated control strategy are that the adaptation algorithm of FDO can achieve non‐overestimating values of the observer gains and the second‐order super‐twisting sliding mode approach can obtain a more elegant solution in finite time. Finally, simulation results of classical RLV (X‐33) are provided to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed fault‐tolerant controller in tracking the guidance commands. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust Actuator‐Fault‐Tolerant Control System Based on Sliding‐Mode Observer for Thrust‐Vectoring Aircrafts

In this paper, a robust actuator‐fault‐tolerant control (FTC) system is proposed for thrust‐vectoring aircraft (TVA) control. To this end, a TVA model with actuator fault dynamics, disturbances, and uncertain aerodynamic parameters is described, and a local fault detection and identification (FDI) mechanism is proposed to locate and identify faults, which utilizes an adaptive sliding‐mode observer (SMO) to detect actuator faults and two SMOs to identify and estimate their parameters. Finally, a fault‐tolerant controller is designed to compensate for these actuator faults, disturbances, and uncertain aerodynamic parameters; the approach combines back‐stepping control with fault parameters and a high‐order SMO. Furthermore, the stability of the entire control system is validated, and simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and potential for this robust FTC system.     

Reaction wheel fault‐tolerant finite‐time control for spacecraft attitude tracking without unwinding

This article proposes fault‐tolerant finite‐time attitude tracking control of a rigid spacecraft actuated by four reaction wheels without unwinding problem in the presence of external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, and actuator faults. First, a novel antiunwinding finite‐time attitude tracking control law is derived with a designed control signal which works within a known actuator‐magnitude constraint using a continuous nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode (NFTSM) concept. Second, a finite‐time disturbance observer (FTDO) is introduced to estimate a lumped disturbance due to external disturbances, uncertain inertia parameter, actuator faults, and input saturation. Third, a composite controller is developed which consists of a feedback control based on the continuous NFTSM method and compensation term based on the FTDO. The global finite‐time stability is proved using Lyapunov stability theory. Moreover, the singularity and unwinding phenomenon are avoided. Simulation results are conducted under actuator constraints in the presence of external disturbances, inertia uncertainty, and actuator faults and results are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. In addition, to show the superiority of the proposed control method over the recently reported control methods, comparative analysis is also presented.     

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.     

Distributed fault‐tolerant control design for spacecraft finite‐time attitude synchronization

This paper develops two distributed finite‐time fault‐tolerant control algorithms for attitude synchronization of multiple spacecraft with a dynamic virtual leader in the presence of modeling uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults. The leader gives commands only to a subset of the followers, and the communication flow between followers is directed. By employing a novel distributed nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode and adaptive mechanism, a distributed finite‐time fault‐tolerant control law is proposed to guarantee all the follower spacecraft that finite‐time track a dynamic virtual leader. Then utilizing three distributed finite‐time sliding mode estimators, an estimator‐based distributed finite‐time fault‐tolerant control law is proposed using only the followers' estimates of the virtual leader. Both of them do not require online identification of the actuator faults and provide robustness, finite‐time convergence, fault‐tolerant, disturbance rejection, and high control precision. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to evaluate the theoretical results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Actuator fault‐tolerant control of ocean surface vessels with input saturation

In this paper, an actuator robust fault‐tolerant control is proposed for ocean surface vessels with parametric uncertainties and unknown disturbances. Using the backstepping technique and Lyapunov synthesis method, the adaptive tracking control is first developed by incorporating the actuator configuration matrix and considering actuator saturation constraints. The changeable actuator configuration matrix caused by rotatable propulsion devices is considered. Next, the actuator fault‐tolerant control is developed for the case when faults occur in propulsion devices of the ocean surface vessel. Rigorous stability analysis is carried out to show that the proposed fault‐tolerant control can guarantee the stability of the closed‐loop system under certain actuator failure. Finally, simulation studies are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive tracking control and fault‐tolerant control. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Observer-based fault tolerant control for a class of nonlinear multi-agent systems with sensor faults

This article focuses on the robust fault tolerant control (FTC) problem for a class of Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems(MASs) subject to sensor faults. Firstly, sensor faults are transformed into actuator faults via introducing a new intermediate auxiliary state variable, and a distributed adaptive fault estimation observer is designed to estimate the state information and the concerned faults by using the relative output estimation error. Then, the sufficient existence conditions for the observer to satisfy the robust performance index are given. Thirdly, based on the results of observer design, a new design method of dynamic output feedback controller is proposed to implement consensus of MASs and ensure the desired disturbance rejection performance. Finally, the simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Adaptive robust actuator fault compensation for linear systems using a novel fault estimation mechanism

This paper investigates the problem of adaptive fault‐tolerant control for a class of linear systems with time‐varying actuator faults. The outage and loss‐of‐effectiveness fault cases are covered. An active fault compensation control law was designed in two steps. Firstly, the time‐varying fault parameters were estimated based on a novel adaptive observer. Compared with the traditional adaptive observer, the actuator fault estimations are faster and the high‐frequency oscillations can be attenuated effectively. Such oscillations are usually caused by increasing the gains of adaptive laws to deal with abrupt changes in system dynamics. Then, based on online estimations of the fault parameters, an adaptive fault‐tolerant controller was constructed to compensate for the loss of actuator effectiveness and to eliminate the effect of fault estimation error. The asymptotic stability and an adaptive performance of a closed‐loop system can be guaranteed, even in the case of actuator faults and disturbances. Simulation results are given to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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 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.     

Finite‐Time Fault‐Tolerant Control for a Class of Non‐Affine Nonlinear System Using Sliding Mode Disturbance Observer

This study investigates a finite‐time fault‐tolerant control scheme for a class of non‐affine nonlinear system with actuator faults and unknown disturbances. A global approximation method is applied to non‐affine nonlinear system to convert it into an affine‐like expression with accuracy. An adaptive terminal sliding mode disturbance observer is proposed to estimate unknown compound disturbances in finite time, including external disturbances and system uncertainties, which enhances system robustness. Controllers based on finite‐time Lyapunov theory are designed to force tracking errors to zero in finite time. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed method.