Frequency-interval control reconfigurability for automated processes

Faults in automated systems will often result in undesired behavior and shut-down of the processes. The consequences of these could be damage to the plant, to personnel and resources, or even to the environment. In particular, in the case of natural disasters, faults are often inevitable. The objective of the methods for fault-tolerant control (FTC) is to prevent simple faults turning into severe failure. Therefore, FTC methods help to increase plant availability and to reduce the risk of safety hazards. However, these methods cannot be effective if sufficient redundancy does not exist in the system. A measure for control reconfigurability which reveals the level of redundancy in connection with feedback control is proposed in this paper. The proposed control reconfigurability measure is developed in particular for many applications in which one is interested in analysis and control within a frequency-interval. Compared to the other counterparts, the proposed measure encodes more information on the level of redundancy within the frequency-interval of interest. An illustrative example is given to show the computation of frequency-interval control reconfigurability and its relevance to redundant actuating capabilities in the models.