Transient reduction in reconfigurable control systems utilizing structure dependence

Reconfigurable control systems are promising alternatives to efficiently control complex time-variant and/or non-linear systems, such as vehicles, gas turbines, etc., which might require a certain level of fault-operational behaviour, as well. Reconfigurable control systems are designed to be able to change the controller at run-time to react to failures, compensate the time-variant and/or nonlinear nature of plant, or accommodate changes in the control objectives. However, these changes in the plant and/or in the controller may cause an intolerable transient. Management of these reconfiguration transients is an open issue. The dependence of the structure of the plant and the controller is identified as a key factor determining the reconfiguration transients. In this paper, some of the possibilities of reducing these transients are investigated. The results are demonstrated on a plant with two modes (operational and failure) controlled by properly designed PID controllers