Active fault tolerant control of turbofan engines with actuator faults under disturbances

In this paper, an active fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme for turbofan engines subject to simultaneous multiplicative and additive actuator faults under disturbances is proposed. First, a state error feedback controller is designed based on interval observer as the nominal controller in order to achieve the model reference rotary speed tracking control for the fault-free turbofan engine under disturbances. Subsequently, a virtual actuator based reconfiguration block is developed aiming at preserving the consistent performance in spite of the occurrence of the simultaneous multiplicative and additive actuator faults. Moreover, to improve the performance of the FTC system, the interval observer is slightly modified without reconstruction of the state error feedback controller. And a theoretical sufficiency criterion is provided to ensure the stability of the proposed active FTC system. Simulation results on a turbofan engine indicate that the proposed active FCT scheme is effective despite of the existence of actuator faults and disturbances.