Sliding mode adaptive state observation for time-delay uncertain nonlinear systems

In this paper a method to design robust adaptive sliding mode observers (ASMO) for a class of nonlinear time- delay systems with uncertainties, is proposed. The objective is to achieve insensitivity and robustness of the proposed sliding mode observer to matched disturbances. A novel systematic design method is synthesized to solve matching conditions and compute observer stabilizing gains. The Lyapunov-Krasovskii theorem is employed to prove the ultimate stability with arbitrary boundedness radius of the estimation error of the proposed filter. Finally, the ability of ASMO for fault reconstruction is studied

Active fault-tolerant control of nonlinear systems with wind turbine application

The thesis concerns the theoretical development of Active Fault-Tolerant Control (AFTC) methods for nonlinear system via T-S multiple-modelling approach. The thesis adopted the estimation and compensation approach to AFTC within a tracking control framework. In this framework, the thesis considers several approaches to robust T-S fuzzy control and T-S fuzzy estimation: T-S fuzzy proportional multiple integral observer (PMIO); T-S fuzzy proportional-proportional integral observer (PPIO); T-S fuzzy virtual sensor (VS) based AFTC; T-S fuzzy Dynamic Output Feedback Control TSDOFC; T-S observer-based feedback control; Sliding Mode Control (SMC). The theoretical concepts have been applied to an offshore wind turbine (OWT) application study. The key developments that present in this thesis are:• The development of three active Fault Tolerant Tracking Control (FTTC) strategies for nonlinear systems described via T-S fuzzy inference modelling. The proposals combine the use of Linear Reference Model Fuzzy Control (LRMFC) with either the estimation and compensation concept or the control reconfiguration concept.• The development of T-S fuzzy observer-based state estimate fuzzy control strategy for nonlinear systems. The developed strategy has the capability to tolerate simultaneous actuator and sensor faults within tracking and regulating control framework. Additionally, a proposal to recover the Separation Principle has also been developed via the use of TSDOFC within the FTTC framework.• The proposals of two FTTC strategies based on the estimation and compensation concept for sustainable OWTs control. The proposals have introduced a significant attribute to the literature of sustainable OWTs control via (1) Obviating the need for Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) unit, (2) Providing useful information to evaluate fault severity via the fault estimation signals.• The development of FTTC architecture for OWTs that combines the use of TSDOFC and a form of cascaded observers (cascaded analytical redundancy). This architecture is proposed in order to ensure the robustness of both the TSDOFC and the EWS estimator against the generator and rotor speed sensor faults.• A sliding mode baseline controller has been proposed within three FTTC strategies for sustainable OWTs control. The proposals utilise the inherent robustness of the SMC to tolerate some matched faults without the need for analytical redundancy. Following this, the combination of SMC and estimation and compensation framework proposed to ensure the close-loop system robustness to various faults.• Within the framework of the developed T-S fuzzy based FTTC strategies, a new perspective to reduce the T-S fuzzy control design conservatism problem has been proposed via the use of different control techniques that demand less design constraints. Moreover, within the SMC based FTTC, an investigation is given to demonstrate the SMC robustness against a wider than usual set of faults is enhanced via designing the sliding surface with minimum dimension of the feedback signals

Observer-based controller design with disturbance feedforward framework for formation control of satellites

Copyright © 2015 The Institution of Engineering and TechnologyIn this study, a bespoke sliding mode non-linear observer and a linear controller framework is proposed for achieving robust formation control of a cluster of satellites in the case of a circular reference orbit. Exploiting the structure of the satellite dynamics, a non-linear observer is proposed based on super-twist sliding mode ideas. The observer estimates the states and any unknown bounded disturbances in ‘finite time’. The stability properties of the observers are demonstrated using Lyapunov techniques. A distributed controller, based on the estimated states and the relative position output information, depending on the underlying communication topology, is proposed. A polytopic representation of the collective dynamics which depends on the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix associated with the communication topology is used to synthesise the gains of the proposed control laws. A simulation example is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach

Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

With the increasing demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in both military and civilian applications, critical safety issues need to be specially considered in order to make better and wider use of them. UAVs are usually employed to work in hazardous and complex environments, which may seriously threaten the safety and reliability of UAVs. Therefore, the safety and reliability of UAVs are becoming imperative for development of advanced intelligent control systems. The key challenge now is the lack of fully autonomous and reliable control techniques in face of different operation conditions and sophisticated environments. Further development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control systems is required to be reliable in the presence of system component faults and to be insensitive to model uncertainties and external environmental disturbances. This thesis research aims to design and develop novel control schemes for UAVs with consideration of all the factors that may threaten their safety and reliability. A novel adaptive sliding mode control (SMC) strategy is proposed to accommodate model uncertainties and actuator faults for an unmanned quadrotor helicopter. Compared with the existing adaptive SMC strategies in the literature, the proposed adaptive scheme can tolerate larger actuator faults without stimulating control chattering due to the use of adaptation parameters in both continuous and discontinuous control parts. Furthermore, a fuzzy logic-based boundary layer and a nonlinear disturbance observer are synthesized to further improve the capability of the designed control scheme for tolerating model uncertainties, actuator faults, and unknown external disturbances while preventing overestimation of the adaptive control parameters and suppressing the control chattering effect. Then, a cost-effective fault estimation scheme with a parallel bank of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) is proposed to accurately estimate actuator fault magnitude and an active fault-tolerant control (FTC) framework is established for a closed-loop quadrotor helicopter system. Finally, a reconfigurable control allocation approach is combined with adaptive SMC to achieve the capability of tolerating complete actuator failures with application to a modified octorotor helicopter. The significance of this proposed control scheme is that the stability of the closed-loop system is theoretically guaranteed in the presence of both single and simultaneous actuator faults

Multiobjective performance-based designs in fault estimation and isolation for discrete-time systems and its application to wind turbines

In this work, we develop a performance-based design of model-based observes and statistical-based decision mechanisms for achieving fault estimation and fault isolation in systems affected by unknown inputs and stochastic noises. First, through semidefinite programming, we design the observers considering different estimation performance indices as the covariance of the estimation errors, the fault tracking delays and the degree of decoupling from unknown inputs and from faults in other channels. Second, we perform a co-design of the observers and decision mechanisms for satisfying certain trade-off between different isolation performance indices: the false isolation rates, the isolation times and the minimum size of the isolable faults. Finally, we extend these results to a scheme based on a bank of observers for the case where multiple faults affect the system and isolability conditions are not verified. To show the effectiveness of the results, we apply these design strategies to a well-known benchmark of wind turbines which considers multiple faults and has explicit requirements over isolation times and false isolation rates

Robust de-centralized control and estimation for inter-connected systems

The thesis is concerned with the theoretical development of the control of inter-connected systems to achieve the whole overall stability and specific performance. A special included feature is the Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) problem for the inter-connected system in terms of local subsystem actuator fault estimation. Hence, the thesis describes the main FTC challenges of distributed control of uncertain non-linear inter-connected systems. The basic principle adopted throughout the work is that the controller has two components, one involving the nominal control with unmatched components including uncertainties and disturbances. The second controller dealing with matched components including uncertainties and actuator faults.The main contributions of the thesis are summarised as follows:- The non-linear inter-connected systems are controlled by two controllers. The linear part via a linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique and the discontinuous part by using Integral Sliding Mode Control (ISMC) based on state feedback control.- The development of a new observer-based state estimate control strategy for non-linear inter-connected systems. The technique is applied either to every individual subsystem or to the whole as one shot system.- A new proposal of Adaptive Output Integral Sliding Mode Control (AOISMC) based only on output information plus static output feedback control is designed via an LMI formulation to control non-linear inter-connected systems. The new method is verified by application to a mathematical example representing an electrical power generator.- The development of a new method to design a dynamic control based on an LMI framework with Output Integral Sliding Mode Control (OISMC) to improve the stability and performance.- Using the above framework, making use of LMI tools and ISMC, a method of on-line actuator fault estimation has been proposed using the Proportional Multiple Integral Observer (PMIO) for fault estimation applicable to non-linear inter-connected systems

Active suspension control of electric vehicle with in-wheel motors

In-wheel motor (IWM) technology has attracted increasing research interests in recent years due to the numerous advantages it offers. However, the direct attachment of IWMs to the wheels can result in an increase in the vehicle unsprung mass and a significant drop in the suspension ride comfort performance and road holding stability. Other issues such as motor bearing wear motor vibration, air-gap eccentricity and residual unbalanced radial force can adversely influence the motor vibration, passenger comfort and vehicle rollover stability. Active suspension and optimized passive suspension are possible methods deployed to improve the ride comfort and safety of electric vehicles equipped with inwheel motor. The trade-off between ride comfort and handling stability is a major challenge in active suspension design. This thesis investigates the development of novel active suspension systems for successful implementation of IWM technology in electric cars. Towards such aim, several active suspension methods based on robust H∞ control methods are developed to achieve enhanced suspension performance by overcoming the conflicting requirement between ride comfort, suspension deflection and road holding. A novel fault-tolerant H∞ controller based on friction compensation is in the presence of system parameter uncertainties, actuator faults, as well as actuator time delay and system friction is proposed. A friction observer-based Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy H∞ controller is developed for active suspension with sprung mass variation and system friction. This method is validated experimentally on a quarter car test rig. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed control methods in improving vehicle ride performance and road holding capability under different road profiles. Quarter car suspension model with suspended shaft-less direct-drive motors has the potential to improve the road holding capability and ride performance. Based on the quarter car suspension with dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) model, a multi-objective parameter optimization for active suspension of IWM mounted electric vehicle based on genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to suppress the sprung mass vibration, motor vibration, motor bearing wear as well as improving ride comfort, suspension deflection and road holding stability. Then a fault-tolerant fuzzy H∞ control design approach for active suspension of IWM driven electric vehicles in the presence of sprung mass variation, actuator faults and control input constraints is proposed. The T-S fuzzy suspension model is used to cope with the possible sprung mass variation. The output feedback control problem for active suspension system of IWM driven electric vehicles with actuator faults and time delay is further investigated. The suspended motor parameters and vehicle suspension parameters are optimized based on the particle swarm optimization. A robust output feedback H∞ controller is designed to guarantee the system’s asymptotic stability and simultaneously satisfying the performance constraints. The proposed output feedback controller reveals much better performance than previous work when different actuator thrust losses and time delay occurs. The road surface roughness is coupled with in-wheel switched reluctance motor air-gap eccentricity and the unbalanced residual vertical force. Coupling effects between road excitation and in wheel switched reluctance motor (SRM) on electric vehicle ride comfort are also analysed in this thesis. A hybrid control method including output feedback controller and SRM controller are designed to suppress SRM vibration and to prolong the SRM lifespan, while at the same time improving vehicle ride comfort. Then a state feedback H∞ controller combined with SRM controller is designed for in-wheel SRM driven electric vehicle with DVA structure to enhance vehicle and SRM performance. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of DVA structure based active suspension system with proposed control method its ability to significantly improve the road holding capability and ride performance, as well as motor performance

Robust de-centralized control and estimation for inter-connected systems

The thesis is concerned with the theoretical development of the control of inter-connected systems to achieve the whole overall stability and specific performance. A special included feature is the Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) problem for the inter-connected system in terms of local subsystem actuator fault estimation. Hence, the thesis describes the main FTC challenges of distributed control of uncertain non-linear inter-connected systems. The basic principle adopted throughout the work is that the controller has two components, one involving the nominal control with unmatched components including uncertainties and disturbances. The second controller dealing with matched components including uncertainties and actuator faults. The main contributions of the thesis are summarised as follows: - The non-linear inter-connected systems are controlled by two controllers. The linear part via a linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique and the discontinuous part by using Integral Sliding Mode Control (ISMC) based on state feedback control. - The development of a new observer-based state estimate control strategy for non-linear inter-connected systems. The technique is applied either to every individual subsystem or to the whole as one shot system. - A new proposal of Adaptive Output Integral Sliding Mode Control (AOISMC) based only on output information plus static output feedback control is designed via an LMI formulation to control non-linear inter-connected systems. The new method is verified by application to a mathematical example representing an electrical power generator. - The development of a new method to design a dynamic control based on an LMI framework with Output Integral Sliding Mode Control (OISMC) to improve the stability and performance. - Using the above framework, making use of LMI tools and ISMC, a method of on-line actuator fault estimation has been proposed using the Proportional Multiple Integral Observer (PMIO) for fault estimation applicable to non-linear inter-connected systems