Reconfigurable control design: achieving stability robustness and failure tracking

This paper is concerned with the design of reconfigurable controls for fault tolerant control systems. The task is to seek for reconfigurable control laws that also effectively facilitate the acquisition of information used for diagnostic purposes. The overall control system performance is measured by a control performance index and a diagnostic performance index. A set of controllers is first designed to achieve a certain control performance level. Then an optimized diagnostic performance level is achieved by using the remaining degree of freedom in the controller. Simple relationships can be established between the two performance indices, which can be used as a guideline to reiterate the design. Technical discussion of the paper is focused on the selection of control criterion that guarantees robust stability in the presence of failures, and on the selection of locations where diagnostic signals are acquired