Sliding mode fault detection and fault-tolerant control of smart dampers in semi-active control of building structures

Recent decades have witnessed much interest in the application of active and semi-active control strategies for seismic protection of civil infrastructures. However, the reliability of these systems is still in doubt as there remains the possibility. of malfunctioning of their critical components (i.e. actuators and sensors) during an earthquake. This paper focuses on the application of the sliding mode method due to the inherent robustness of its fault detection observer and fault-tolerant control. The robust sliding mode observer estimates the state of the system and reconstructs the actuators' faults which are used for calculating a fault distribution matrix. Then the fault-tolerant sliding mode controller reconfigures itself by the fault distribution matrix and accommodates the fault effect on the system. Numerical simulation of a three-story structure with magneto-rheological dampers demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control system. It was shown that the fault-tolerant control system maintains the performance of the structure at an acceptable level in the post-fault case.