ENHANCING FAULT ISOLATION THROUGH NONLINEAR CONTROLLER DESIGN

This work proposes a fault detection and isolation scheme that takes into account, in an explicit way, the design of the feedback control law. This scheme allows isolating specific faults in the closed-loop system using a purely data-based approach without requiring prior knowledge of fault history. This is accomplished through the design of an appropriate nonlinear control law based on feedback linearization that allows isolating given faults by effectively decoupling the dependency between certain process state variables. The results are demonstrated through a continuously stirred tank reactor example.