An optimization approach to control reconfiguration (Q1306890)

The paper investigates the problem of control reconfiguration in response to operating condition changes or abrupt system component failures. The authors propose an optimization algorithm (on the basis of Broyden-Fletcher-Golgfarb-Shanno optimization method of conjugate directions) that always guarantees the stability of all closed-loop eigenvalues, even in the case of severe failure scenarios. The new stabilizing feedback controller for the impaired system captures as much of the dynamics of the original system as possible, being designed to minimize the Frobenius norm of the difference matrix between the original and the impaired closed-loop transition matrices. Another useful feature of the proposed optimization algorithm is its robustness with respect to modelling errors concerning the state-space matrices of the new/impaired system. This means that the new controller is capable of maintaining the closed-loop stability even in the presence of uncertainty in the state-space matrices of the impaired system. The algorithm is successfully applied to an aircraft longitudinal control system, for which two severe cases of failure are considered; first the loss of an actuator and then the loss of a sensor in addition to the actuator loss.