Increasing the Reliability of High Redundancy Actuators by Using Elements in Series and Parallel

Authors:
Thomas Steffen;Frank Schiller;Michael Blum;Roger Dixon
Affiliations:
Control Systems Group, Department of Eletronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK LE11 3TU;Institute of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität München, Garching near Munich, Germany D-85748;Institute of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität München, Garching near Munich, Germany D-85748;Control Systems Group, Department of Eletronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK LE11 3TU
Venue:
SAFECOMP '09 Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security
Year:
2009

Citing 2
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Fault diagnosis in dynamic systems using analytical and knowledge-based redundancy—a survey and some new results

Automatica (Journal of IFAC)
Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control

Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control

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Abstract

A high redundancy actuator (HRA) is composed of a high number of actuation elements, increasing both the travel and the force above the capability of an individual element. This provides inherent fault tolerance: if one of the elements fails, the capabilities of the actuator may be reduced, but it does not become dysfunctional. This paper analyses the likelihood of reductions in capabilities. The actuator is considered as a multi-state system, and the approach for k -out-of-n :G systems can be extended to cover the case of the HRA. The result is a probability distribution that quantifies the capability of the HRA. By comparing the distribution for different configurations, it is possible to identify the optimal configuration of an HRA for a given situation.