Fault Tolerant Control of Automotive Air Conditioning Systems using a GIMC Structure

Although model-based fault tolerant control (FTC) has become prevalent in various engineering fields, its application to air-conditioning systems is limited due to the lack of control-oriented models to characterize the phase change of refrigerant in the vapor compression cycle. The emergence of moving boundary method (MBM) illuminates a promising way for FTC design. In this paper, we exploit a control-oriented nonlinear model comparable to MBM to design an FTC framework with a generalized internal model control (GIMC) approach. A fault detector and isolator (FDI) is developed to identify potential actuator and sensor faults. A fault compensator is employed to compensate these faults if detected. Comprehensive simulations are carried out to evaluate the developed FTC framework with promising results. Plant variations are explicitly considered to enhance the gain-scheduled FTC developments.