Fault estimation and virtual actuator FTC approach for LPV systems

Abstract

In this paper, a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) strategy using a virtual actuator for Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems is proposed. The main idea of this FTC method is to reconfigure the control loop such that the nominal controller could still be used without need of retuning it. The plant with the faulty actuator is modified adding the virtual actuator block that masks the fault. The suggested strategy is an active FTC strategy that reconfigures the virtual actuator on-line taking into account faults and operating point changes. In order to implement the virtual actuator approach, a fault estimation is required. In this work, the fault estimation is formulated as a parameter estimation problem. The LPV virtual actuator is designed using polytopic LPV techniques and Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). To assess the performance of the proposed approach an aeronautical application is used.