Distributed control reconfiguration of nonlinear interconnected systems in the presence of actuator faults

Abstract This article proposes a new method of distributed fault‐tolerant control for a class of nonlinear interconnected systems with actuator faults. This method is based on fault‐hiding idea as a reconfiguration control scheme and tries to redesign the control signal according to the dynamics of the faulty subsystem. Based on fault‐hiding principle, after diagnosing actuator faults, control signals are modified by a predesigned dynamic block which is implemented in the closed‐loop control structure with the same nominal controller. Subsystems are considered as nonlinear Lipschitz systems which interact with each other through nonlinear interconnection dynamics. Because of interactions, occurring a fault in one subsystem causes instability in the overall large‐scale system. A distributed control scheme based on solving a new linear matrix inequality is presented to obtain the control inputs so that it can recover stability and performance of the overall system. Simulation results illustrate and verify the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.