Fault-Tolerant Control for Three-Tank System in Case of Sensor Faults

This research paper would be devoted to the application of a fault-tolerant control (FTC) for a benchmark system composed of three interconnected tanks in case of sensor faults. The control scheme includes two blocks: fault detection and isolation (FDI) block and a control law reconfiguration block. The strategy of the FDI method is based on a bank of high gain observers; each of them is constructed to estimate the system state vector. Thus, the diagnostic signal-residuals are generated by the comparison of measured and estimated outputs and the faulty sensor is isolated. The reconfiguration block performs an update of the controller parameters according to the operating mode. The application of this method to a pilot plant demonstrates that the hydrographic system maintains quite performances after sensor faults occurrence.