Fault detection in a rotational system with an eccentric load using sliding mode observer

Vehicle health monitoring system (VHMS) is a part of vehicle health management (VHM) and it is commonly used in various industries: particularly in aerospace and automotive. VHMS provides real time feedbacks, information on life cycle reduction and saves operation cost and time. This requires sensors to gather data for processing through many processes such as fault detection and isolation (FDI) before it is sent for prognosis and diagnosis. This paper presents model-based fault detection & reconstruction of state variables using cascaded Sliding Mode Observers (SMOs). An experimental implementation and validation of the SMO in detecting and isolating actuator and sensor faults accurately. The experimental results agrees with simulated estimated states and hence the cascaded SMO faithfully reconstruct the sensor and actuator faults.