Analysis of reconfigured control loop with a virtual actuator

Abstract

Control reconfiguration changes the control structure in response to a fault detected in the plant. This becomes necessary, because a major fault like loss of an actuator breaks the corresponding control loop and therefore renders the whole system inoperable. An important aim of control reconfiguration is to change the control structure as little as possible, since every change bears the potential of practical problems. The proposed solution is to keep the original controller in the loop and to add an extension called virtual actuator that implements the necessary changes of the control structure. The virtual actuator translates between the signals of the nominal controller and the signal of the faulty plants. This paper is concerned with the analysis of reconfigured loop with a virtual actuator for the system with the faulty actuator. The proposed analysis is illustrated on numerical example.