Fault diagnosis of vibration control system for flexible structures (Simultaneous fault detection of actuators and sensors by fuzzy reasoning)

The paper proposes a method for simultaneous actuator and sensor fault diagnosis for a vibration control system for flexible structures, using fuzzy reasoning. In a control system, actuators and sensors are connected serially. Therefore it is not easy to detect which components (either or both of them) have failed by measuring only one sensor's output. In the proposed diagnosis method, firstly, the sensor's faulty conditions are estimated by a diagnosis test and respective fuzzy reasoning procedure. Secondly, the actuators' faulty conditions are estimated by fuzzy reasoning under the assumption of normal condition for the sensors. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been shown on a simulation example of a vibration control system for a 3-link flexible structure.