Fault estimation for nonlinear parameter-varying time-delayed systems

Abstract

A fault estimation method for a class of nonlinear parameter-varying systems subject to time-varying delay and unmeasured nonlinearities is presented. The unmeasured time-varying parameters are effectively handled using a sector-based condition approach. A gain-scheduling intermediate estimator is proposed to simultaneously estimate the system state and the unknown faults. Design conditions are derived based on Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and integral inequality techniques. These conditions, expressed as linear matrix inequalities, ensure that the estimation error dynamics are input-to-state stable with respect to the time-derivative of the faults. Moreover, it is demonstrated that for the case of piecewise constant faults, the estimation error dynamics are exponentially stable. As a corollary result, conditions are also presented to design gain-scheduling intermediate estimators for nonlinear parameter-varying systems without time-varying delays. Three physically motivated examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and practical interests of the proposed nonlinear estimation method.