Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Compensation Control and Its Application to Nonlinear Suspension Systems

In this paper, an adaptive fault-tolerant method is proposed to synthesize a compensation controller for the uncertain nonlinear pure-feedback systems possessing dead-zone actuators and stochastic failures. Each actuator’s failure mode is described by a scalar Markovian type function, which is not only much more practical in control engineering but also challenging in control theory. By exploring the adaptive backstepping methodology, a compensation scheme for actuator failure is presented to guarantee that the solution of the closed-loop system is a unique and bounded in probability. Importantly, the proposed control method can achieve arbitrarily small tracking error in the presence of nonlinear actuators with random failures. The case study of active suspension system using the adaptive fault-tolerant compensation controller shows the effectiveness of the presented method.