Control systems include many components, such as transducers, sensors, actuators and mechanical parts. These components are required to be operated under some specific conditions. However, due to prolonged operations or harsh operating environment, the properties of these devices may degrade to an unacceptable level, causing more regular fault occurrences. It is therefore necessary to diagnose faults and provide the fault-accommodation control which compensates for the fault of the component by substituting a configuration of redundant elements so that the system continues to operate satisfactorily.
In this book, we present a result of several years of work in the area of fault diagnosis and fault-accommodation control. It aims at information estimate methods when faults occur. The book uses the model built from the plant or process, to detect and isolate failures, in contrast to traditional hardware or statistical technologies dealing with failures. It presents model-based learning and design technologies for fault detection, isolation and identification as well as fault-tolerant control. These models are also used to analyse the fault detectability and isolability conditions and discuss the stability of the closed-loop system. It is intended to report new technologies in the area of fault diagnosis, covering fault analysis and control strategies of design for various applications. The book addresses four main schemes: modelling of actuator or sensor faults; fault detection and isolation; fault identification, and fault reconfiguration (accommodation) control. It also covers application issues in the monitoring control of actuators, providing several interesting case studies for more application-oriented readers.