Fault tolerant shape control for particulate process systems under simultaneous actuator and sensor faults

The problem of fault tolerant shape control for particle size distribution (PSD) process subject to simultaneous time-varying actuator and sensor faults is studied. In this work, sensor and actuator faults are taken into consideration in a unified framework, and estimated by using adaptive observer technique. For the PSD process, the output distribution, rather than the system output signal itself, is adopted for shape control. Square root rational B-spline approximation is used to fit the distribution shape. An innovative on-line fault estimation scheme is proposed for simultaneous actuator and sensor faults estimation. Then an augmented controller based on the virtual actuator and virtual sensor techniques is designed to compensate for the faults and realise PSD shape tracking. A simulation example of emulsion polymerisation is used to validate the proposed scheme and satisfactory performance is obtained.