Habitat automation

A habitat, on either the surface of the Moon or Mars, will be designed and built with the proven technologies of that day. These technologies will be mature and readily available to the habitat designer. We believe an acceleration of the normal pace of automation would allow a habitat to be safer and more easily maintained than would be the case otherwise. This document examines the operation of a habitat and describes elements of that operation which may benefit from an increased use of automation. Research topics within the automation realm are then defined and discussed with respect to the role they can have in the design of the habitat. Problems associated with the integration of advanced technologies into real-world projects at NASA are also addressed

An active fault tolerant control approach to an offshore wind turbine model

The paper proposes an observer based active fault tolerant control (AFTC) approach to a non-linear large rotor wind turbine benchmark model. A sensor fault hiding and actuator fault compensation strategy is adopted in the design. The adapted observer based AFTC system retains the well-accepted industrial controller as the baseline controller, while an extended state observer (ESO) is designed to provide estimates of system states and fault signals within a linear parameter varying (LPV) descriptor system context using linear matrix inequality (LMI). In the design, pole-placement is used as a time-domain performance specification while H∞ optimization is used to improve the closed-loop system robustness to exogenous disturbances or modelling uncertainty. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can easily be viewed as an extension of currently used control technology, with the AFTC proving clear “added value” as a fault tolerant system, to enhance the sustainability of the wind turbine in the offshore environment

Application of multiple resistive superconducting fault-current limiters for fast fault detection in highly interconnected distribution systems

Superconducting fault-current limiters (SFCLs) offer several benefits for electrical distribution systems, especially with increasing distributed generation and the requirements for better network reliability and efficiency. This paper examines the use of multiple SFCLs in a protection scheme to locate faulted circuits, using an approach which is radically different from typical proposed applications of fault current limitation, and also which does not require communications. The technique, referred to as “current division discrimination” (CDD), is based upon the intrinsic inverse current-time characteristics of resistive SFCLs, which ensures that only the SFCLs closest to a fault operate. CDD is especially suited to meshed networks and particularly when the network topology may change over time. Meshed networks are expensive and complex to protect using conventional methods. Simulation results with multiple SFCLs, using a thermal-electric superconductor model, confirm that CDD operates as expected. Nevertheless, CDD has limitations, which are examined in this paper. The SFCLs must be appropriately rated for the maximum system fault level, although some variation in actual fault level can be tolerated. For correct coordination between SFCLs, each bus must have at least three circuits that can supply fault current, and the SFCLs should have identical current-time characteristics

A methodology for testing fault-tolerant software

A methodology for testing fault tolerant software is presented. There are problems associated with testing fault tolerant software because many errors are masked or corrected by voters, limiter, or automatic channel synchronization. This methodology illustrates how the same strategies used for testing fault tolerant hardware can be applied to testing fault tolerant software. For example, one strategy used in testing fault tolerant hardware is to disable the redundancy during testing. A similar testing strategy is proposed for software, namely, to move the major emphasis on testing earlier in the development cycle (before the redundancy is in place) thus reducing the possibility that undetected errors will be masked when limiters and voters are added