Fault-tolerant control of paper machine headboxes

Abstract This paper presents a model-based fault detection and fault-tolerant control technique for the pressurized headbox of a paper machine. A bank of Kalman filters is constructed corresponding to all the possible sensor failure modes. The possibility that each failure mode hypothesis is true is calculated using measurement innovation processes. The sensor failures are detected and located based on the calculated possibilities of the hypotheses. The controller and state estimator are automatically reorganized subsequent to the occurrence of failures to ensure the stability and good performance of the closed-loop system. The issues of system hardware redundancy and computational burden as well as implemental complexity are taken into account in the system design. Simulation results have shown satisfactory performance of the headbox control system after applying the presented technique.