Observer-Based Robust Fault Predictive Control for Wind Turbine Time-Delay Systems with Sensor and Actuator Faults

This paper presents a novel observer-based robust fault predictive control (OBRFPC) approach for a wind turbine time-delay system subject to constraints, actuator/sensor faults, and external disturbances. The proposed approach is based on an augmented state-space representation that contains state-space variables and estimation errors. The proposed augmented representation is then used to synthesize a robust predictive controller. In addition, an observer is developed and used to estimate both state variables and actuator/sensor faults. To ensure that the proposed approach has disturbance rejection capabilities, the disturbance estimates were merged with the prediction model. In addition, the disturbance rejection capabilities and fault tolerance were insured by formulating the control process as an optimization problem subject to constraints in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). As a result, the controller gains are acquired by solving an LMI problem to guarantee input-to-state stability in the presence of sensor and actuator faults. A simulation example is conducted on a nonlinear wind turbine (1 MW) model with 3 blades, a horizontal axis, and upwind variable speed subject to actuator/sensor faults in the pitch system. The results demonstrate the ability of the proposed method in dealing with nonlinear systems subject to external disturbances and keeping the control performance acceptable in the presence of actuator/sensor faults.