The use of hybrid automata for fault-tolerant control of parametric failures

The purpose of this work is to make use of hybrid automata for vibration control reconfiguration under system failures. Fault detection and isolation (FDI) filters are used to monitor an active vibration control system. When system failures occur (specifically parametric faults) the FDI filters detect and identify the specific failure. In this work we are specifically interested in parametric faults such as changes in system physical parameters; however this approach works equally well with additive faults such as sensor or actuator failures. The FDI filter output is used to drive a hybrid automaton, which selects the appropriate controller and FDI filter from a library. The hybrid automata also implements switching between controllers and filters in order to maintain optimal performance under faulty operating conditions. The biggest challenge in developing this system is managing the switching and in maintaining stability during the discontinuous switches. Therefore, in addition to vibration control, the stability associated with switching compensators and FDI filters is studied. Furthermore, the performance of two types of FDI filters is compared: filters based on parameter estimation methods and so called "Beard-Jones" filters. Finally, these simulations help in understanding the use of hybrid automata for fault-tolerant control