Fault-tolerant control of a nonlinear system application to a three-tank-system

In this paper, a fault-tolerant control method is developed. This method makes possible the compensation of additive or multiplicative actuator and component faults. Its interest is to consider the nonlinear model of the system, controlled with an exact linearization input-output by state feedback. The principle of the fault-tolerant control is based on the on-line estimation of a quantity which is equal to zero in the fault-free case and equal to the fault magnitude when a fault occurs on the system. Then, a new control law is added to the nominal one in order to compensate the fault effect on the system. The performances of this method are tested in simulation and in real application to a nonlinear pilot plant : a three-tank system.