Actuator failure diagnosis and accommodation using sliding mode control for submersible vehicle

This paper presents a failure diagnosis and accommodation strategy which is capable of tolerating faulty actuators of a submersible vehicle. The proposed method is mainly based on a sliding mode control technique. The primary ideas include a performance index to describe the effectiveness of actuators, and a controller reconfiguration strategy using the actuator effectiveness index. The actuator effectiveness proposed in this work is defined as the relationship between the sliding surface and the controlled system behavior. The resulting actuator effectiveness is then used in reconfiguring the controller in order to counteract for the deteriorated control performance in the presence of a faulty actuator. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by means of numerical simulations with a submersible vehicle.