Event-triggered robust fault-tolerant control of a class of Euler–Bernoulli beam equations via sliding mode control

In this article, a robust fault-tolerant sliding mode controller is proposed for a class of non-homogeneous Euler–Bernoulli beams which contains controller time-varying fault, external unknown spatiotemporally varying disturbance, and parametric uncertainties. Furthermore, to reduce the number of correspondence between the controller and the actuator, two event-triggered mechanisms are incorporated into the controller design. The sliding surface designed ensures that the system is uniformly ultimately bounded and robust to the parameter uncertainties in model. In addition, the Euler–Bernoulli beam can be used as a model for the flexible wind turbine tower. Numerical simulations are shown to illustrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed control method. The simulation results show that in the presence of unknown faults and parametric uncertainties, the proposed controller can still effectively suppress the vibration of the tower, while the event-triggered mechanism significantly reduces the communications burden.