Identification of sensor fault for the performance and stability of centralized control logics

This paper focuses on the study of the effect of sensor fault when large sensor arrays (for example Fiber Bragg Grating arrays) are considered. Indeed, sensor arrays provide a distributed measurement of the structure vibrations, allowing the design of optimized control logics. Anyway, due to the large number of sensors, the reliability is lower and the malfunctioning of one or more sensors can occur. For this reason, an online identification of faults is important, so that the information can be taken into account in the definition of control law. The effect of sensor fault on the measurement of structure vibrations will be investigated and a method for the identification of sensor faults is proposed. Numerical tests on a beam equipped with an array of FBG sensors will be reported.