Control reconfiguration of full-state linearizable systems by a virtual actuator

This paper presents a new method for control reconfiguration of nonlinear, input-affine systems subject to actuator failures. For full-state linearizable systems it is shown that after the occurrence of an actuator failure the linearizing feedback has to be adapted to the failure case. In a second step, the reconfiguration of the re-linearized system can be accomplished by means of a static linear virtual actuator. An interesting observation is the fact that the faulty system stays reconfigurable as long as there is one actuator left in the faulty plant. This paper illustrates the method by considering a fluid process.