Sensor fault tolerant generic model control for nonlinear systems

A modified Strong Tracking Filter (STF) is used to develop a new approach to sensor fault tolerant control. Generic Model Control (GMC) is used to control the nonlinear process while the process runs normally because of its robust control performance. If a fault occurs in the sensor, a sensor bias vector is then introduced to the output equation of the process model. The sensor bias vector is estimated on-line during every control period using the STF. The estimated sensor bias vector is used to develop a fault detection mechanism to supervise the sensors. When a sensor fault occurs, the conventional GMC is switched to a fault tolerant control scheme, which is, in essence, a state estimation and output prediction based GMC. The laboratory experimental results on a three-tank system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed Sensor Fault Tolerant Generic Model Control (SFTGMC) approach.