Robust Adaptive Sliding Mode Fault Tolerant Control for Nonlinear System with Actuator Fault and External Disturbance

In this paper, an adaptive sliding mode fault tolerant control (ASMFTC) approach is proposed for a class of nonlinear systems with actuator fault, uncertainty, and external disturbance. Specifically, first, a novel observer is proposed to estimate the state, actuator fault, and external disturbance. Then, by utilising the observed information, a novel output sliding mode observer is constructed. In the control method, an adaptive law and two compensators are designed to attenuate the unknown estimation errors, actuator fault, and disturbance. Furthermore, the reaching ability of the sliding motion is analysed and the H‐infinite performance is introduced to ensure the robustness of the system. Finally, a flexible single joint manipulator system and a two‐cart system are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.