A fault-tolerant control technique for accommodation of partial actuator faults

In this paper, a robust adaptive controller for accommodation of partial actuator faults is introduced. The proposed controller is based on the robust adaptive model-reference control scheme with improved dead zone modification. The common problem of steady state error in robust adaptive systems with simple dead zone modification is resolved by tuning a specific parameter inside the dead zone with a different adaptive law. Different types of actuator faults including output offset, loss of efficiency, and output delay are compensated with the proposed method. We behave these faults as uncertainties and disturbances. The proposed technique does not need an extra unit for fault detection and diagnosis. Comparative simulation studies are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control technique versus the robust adaptive controller with simple dead zone modification.