Experimental Second Order Sliding Mode Fault Tolerant Control for
Moment Gyroscope System with Sensor Fault
Ahmed Chaibet
ESTACA, Ecole d'Ingenieurs
34, rue de Victor Hugo
92300 Levallois-Perret, France
ahmed.chaibet@estaca.fr
Ahstract-The paper proposes and evaluates an experimental
passive sensor fault tolerant control for a gyroscope system.
The sensor fault occurrence reduces the performance and may
even cause the instability. This work focuses on developing fault
tolerant control when these drawbacks are occurred. A passive
fault tolerant control (PFTC) scheme is developed to counteract
a sensor failure and parameters uncertainties. A second sliding
mode FTC strategy based on super twisting algorithm ensures
the stability robustness of the gyroscope system in the presence
of the additive faults. For this purpose, the passive fault tolerant
control (PFTC) approach is designed to preserve the stability
and to maintain an acceptable performance when the sensor
failure appears. The effectiveness of the proposal fault tolerant
control strategy is validated by simulation and experiment
results in presence of the sensor fault.
Index Terms-Gyroscope, fault tolerant control, super twist­
ing algorithm, robust control.
1. INTRODUCTION
classical control design for a complex system may
A result an unsatisfactory performance, or even insta­
bility, in the presence of the faults and parameter uncer­
tainties. These faults can be considered as additive and/or
multiplicative disturbances. To overcome this weaknesses,
new approach control designs have developed in order to
attenuate these disturbances, tolerated model uncertainties
and maintained a desirable stability with satisfactory perfor­
mances. The purpose of fault tolerant control is to modify
the control law to cancel the effects of the faults or to reduce
them to an acceptable level. Generally, fault tolerant control
(FTC) schemes are classified as either Passive Fault Tolerant
Control (PFTC) or Active Fault Tolerant Control (AFTC).
The Passive Fault Tolerant Control is synthesized to be robust
against faults, disturbances and uncertainties during the phase
design. This control approach is based on robust control tools
to ensure the insensitivity of the closed loop system against
the occurring faults assumed to be known a priori. The fault
tolerance is achieved by maintaining an acceptable perfor­
mance and stability properties without changing the structure
of the controller. This control technique requires no online
detection of the faults, and is therefore computationally more
attractive. As the possible sensor faults have been considered
at the passive FT controller design stage,
978-1-4799-6773-5/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Moussa Boukhnifer
ESTACA, Ecole d'Ingenieurs
34, rue de Victor Hugo
92300 Levallois-Perret, France
moussa. boukhnifer@estaca.fr
the structures of passive FT controllers are oftentimes fixed
in the presence of this type of fault. Several FT control
methods have been proposed and have been the subject of
long research. In [1], the authors consider a passive fault
tolerant control for nonlinear affine systems with actuator
additive fault problem. A Lyapunov based feedback con­
troller is synthesized. This control technique maintains the
stability in the occurrence of these faults. The autonomous
helicopter numerical example is provided to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed technique. Moreover, it can
be noticed a lot of works have been developed for aircraft
system. In [2], the authors developed a passive fault tolerant
control design based on sliding mode control strategy for an
uncertain MIMO aircraft model F18, in order to eliminate
the effect of certain type of pre-specified faults. In [3],
another robust fault tolerant flight controller based on sliding
mode control combined with adaptive technique designed to
counteract a wide range of faults. In [4] a sliding mode fault
tolerant control scheme is proposed to design the attitude of
spacecraft, this approach is applied to attenuate the faulty
thrusters. The simulation results demonstrate the efficient of
this control architecture in spite of actuator fault. In [5],
an additive fault actuator is studied, in order to asses the
FTC approach, an electrical vehicle control example with
four wheels independently actuated is considered. Simulation
results using CarSim demonstrate the effectiveness of the
suggested control method. Other applications can also be find
in other domains such MEMS optical switch [6], chemical
process [7], piezoelectric motor [8] and automotive domain
[9].
In the present paper, a passive fault tolerant control based
on second sliding mode robust control for a gyroscope
system is developed. The aim of this work is to develop
a new methodology for the control of gyroscope dynamic
system in the presence of disturbances, model uncertainties
or actuator /sensor fault in order to ensure the stability
with an acceptable certain level of performance in such
circumstances. The PFTC based on twisting algorithm is an
alternative solution to preserve the stability robustness with
a good performance. The outline of this paper is as follows.
Section 2 is devoted to mathematical modeling of gyroscope
system. Section 3 describes some theoretical concepts of
PFTC control. P erformances of the proposed control scheme
405
are highlighted by simulation and experimental results which be zero) due to the symmetric nature of the gyroscope. The
are shown in the section 4. Finally, this work is closed by equations of motion can be found by the Lagrange equations.
conclusion in the section 5. The linearized equations of motion can be formulate as a set
of couple linear differential equations:
II. GYRO SCO P E MO DEL ING
The moment gyroscope system is a rigid mechanical JDWI =
TI - JDW3 (1)
body which consists of a rotating mass suspended in several (lc+ID)� =
T2+JDW4
gimbals. The gyroscope plays an important role in various ( JB+JD+JD)W3 =
-JDWI
fields such as aeronautics, maritime, satellites. The ability
of this system is that can be coupled with other sensors to
(ID+KA +KB+Kc)W4 =
-JD�
measure with high precision. It is used to determine the
aircraft attitude during the flight, for stabilization of ships,
The equation 1 can be written as space state representation
satellites. The considered gyroscope consists of four (4) by definition of the state vector:
rigid rotating masses. It is composed of four gimbals. These

(OJ (t)
gimbals allow free rotation of the gyroscope about its own
X(t) =
[lh,(t) B3(t) B4 (t) WI(t) OJ?(t) W4(tW
axis [15]. By considering of the angular positions of four
and the control input: u(t) =
[TI(t) T2(tW
rigid bodies in the gyroscope, the dynamic of this gyroscope
The simplified dynamic model relies on the following
can be described by four DOF. The Educational Control
assumptions:
Products (ECP 750) system permits free rotation along four
• The gimbal axis 4 is locked (W4) 0 =

perpendicular axes. The diagram given by the Fig. 1 shows

• The bodies B and C become one in the same
the kinematics of the system, and the used notations:
• By setting � 0 and W4 0
= =

The four degrees of freedom are rotations around the axis

• All angles are sufficiently small so the linear approxi­
1, 2, 3, and 4. The electromechanical dynamics system
mation is valid
consists of angular position and rotation speed according
to the four axes. These quantities can be directly measured Under the above assumptions, the overall motion of the
by encoders. Two inputs are considered for this system, the gyroscope can be effectively described by three equations:
first one is a torque applied to D by C (via the rotor spin
motor) and the second one input is a torque, applied to C
by B (via a gimbal motor).

(2)

With Jb= 0.0178 kg.m 2, Jc = 0.023 kg.m2 and Jd = 0.0273

kg.m2; In the present case, the plant is 3rd order and
therefore three states are selected. The equations of motion
for this system evolve time derivatives of positions about
axes 1 and 3. Because we are controlling motion about axis
3, we select two states as B3 and W3. The output vector can
be written as follows
Fig.!. The 4 DOF gyroscope comprised of gimbals CA, B, and C) along
with an axi-symmetric disk CD) [15]

(3)
Since each rigid body might be able to rotate along a 3
dimensional axis, we must consider the inertia I, J and K of
each body respectively along XI, X2 and X3 axis. We define III. DESIGN OF PASSI V E FAULT TOLERANT CONTROL
the inertia l , with b A B C and D.
b =
, , ,

Passive fault tolerant control is achieved under various

ol b
OJ' _
- body A, B, C, and D
Kb
Where h denotes the inertia along the XI axis, Jb denotes
the inertia along the X2 axis and Kb denotes the inertia along
the X3 axis. We can notice that only moments of inertia are
considered, while the products on inertia are negligible ( to
component faults without changing the controller. A typical
example of a passive approach is robust controller design,
a well-established and researched approach to achieve fault
tolerance. Typically, faults can be modeled as plant uncer­
tainties in order to be well covered by robust control design
(see Fig. 2). The appearance of faults in the actuators, sensors
and plant uncertainties, is usually described by additive or

406
multiplicative terms with a mathematical model assumed to with: ueq is the equivalent control obtained by solving 8= 0
be known a priori. In our work, we applied the second order
sliding mode control, the performances of the suggested Co
controller are finally highlighted by some tests in simulations W>­ (12)
Km
and experiments. 4 CoKM(W +Co)
A 2> (13 )
Iq,(W - Co)
0< p �0.5 (14)

The values of W, A are deduced from conditions that make

possible the application of the algorithm (9) which satisfy the
inequalities (6), (7) and (8).

B. Design methodology
Fig. 2. Design of passive fault tolerant contol (PFTC) [12] We develop in this section the second order sliding mode
control design for a gyroscope system. we proceed as

A.
follows:
Second Order Sliding Mode Control The aim of the control is to minimize the error between
The first order sliding mode control procedure already the measured angular position of the axis 3 and the desired
presents good properties. However, the existence of the high one, the error is noted () = e3 - e3des.
frequency chattering phenomenon my lead to the actuator's The sliding surface is chosen as:
degradation. To reduce or to avoid this drawback, High
Order Sliding Modes (HOSM) can be used. Enhancement (15)
is explored here by means of a second order sliding mode,
especially using super twisting algorithm [13]. The aim of where, cI, C2 are constants. The equivalent control input is
this algorithm is to choose a surface to obtain after a finite first computed from 8 = o.
time S = 8= 0.
8 = (W:J - 83des)+CI(W3 - e3des)+C2(e3 - e3des) = 0 (16)
We consider the following system:
G+LTleq=O
x = j(t,x,u)
(17)
(4)
S = S (t,x) (5) Where T leq corresponds to the equivalent control input
for our system (2) and:
where x ER, u = U(t,x) ER is the control, j and S are
smooth functions. The focus of this twisting algorithm is to
reach the sliding manifold in finite time. To achieve this,
the constants So, Km, KM and Co must satisfy the following
inequalities:

o <Km
I��I
IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
� �KM (6)
A. Simulation results
a. a·
l I
(t x ) S(t x ) (t x )j(t,x,u) �KM Simulation results were performed using Matlab/Simulink
a/ , ,u + ax , ,u , ,u
(7)
in closed loop control architecture. In order to show the ad­
lSI <So (8) vantages of the passive fault tolerant control, it is interesting
to make a comparison between two control laws, the first
The super twlstmg algorithm is proposed in order to
one so-called classical, the choice is brought to the state
cancel the chattering phenomenon. The control law consists
feedback control (pole placement) and second one is the
of two components. the first term is defined by means of
PFTC based on variable structure systems theory (V SS) (
its discontinuous time derivative, while the second one is
sliding mode control). In addition, these control laws were
continuous function of the available, sliding variable [13],
tested in both cases. The first case concerns the nominal
[14]. The algorithm is defined by the following control law:
mode (without additive noise) and the second case in the
u (t) = UI (t) +U2 (t) (9) presence of additive noise. The responses to a square wave
reference signal are given in the Fig. 3 and Fig. 5.

itl = { --Wu,sign(S)
lui> l ueq l
, lui � l ueq l
(10)
With these plots for the nominal case (without fault), the
following remarks can be deduced:

U2 = {
-ASgsign(S) , lSI>ISol • The state feedback (pole placement) controller offers a
(11 )
-A lSI sign(S) , lSI � ISol good performances as well in dynamics as in statics.

407
 ���:.----;:.--;!;---;:c---.:c---.�
�'••
Ti"",[Se�l

(a) (b)

Fig. 4. Phase plane trajectory

'---�
�'••
Ti"",[Se�l
�:.----;:.--;�!;---;:c---.:;--;�

(c) (d)
Fig. 3. Angular positions of gimbal axis 3: (a) angular position and (b)
control input with classical control, (c) angular position and (d) control input o 5 10 " 20 Z5 3D '" ." ...
with PFTC second order sliding mode T_[Se�l

(a) (b)

• The good tracking of trajectory is assured '7'-- ' f-7'-'

I I
• Fig. 4 shows the phase portrait (S,8) which proves the
convergence to the sliding manifold.
\ \
In the faulty case ( in the presence of the additive fault): �- �
:7'"+ ,
L
I
• The responses to the square wave reference with addi­ ...
:, : l�,�:::':...
:
tive fault are shown in Fig.5. The two proposed control ' . " � � . " " "

laws are compared, this fault is emulated at 7 second.

We can see in Fig.5.c, the twisting algorithm PFTC con­
troller attenuates the occurrence fault by achieving an
acceptable level performance, while the state feedback
control presents a deterioration of the performances
when the fault appears and may lead an instability.
• It can also be seen that the response with second order
sliding mode PFTC remain stable and it can be noted
also this controller is not affected by this fault unlike to
the state feedback controller. The Fig.5.a shows that the
system become unstable in the occurrence of additive
fault.
• The time evolution of the twisting algorithm PFTC
(c) (d)
Fig. 5. Angular positions of gimbal axis 3 in faulty case: (a) position and
(b) control input with classical control, (c) angular position and (d) control
input with PFTC second order sliding mode
information. The angular position of gimbal axis 3 is
measured by the encoder which compared to the desired
angular position and the DI A converter can feed the control
signal to the amplifier control DC motors. All measurements
are acquired by the encoders through a dSPACE 1103 board
connected to ControlDesk graphical user interface software.

control input is remain smooth Fig. 5.d in the faulty case
and comparatively to the state feedback control input
with the existence of the high frequency may lead to
DC motor degradation (see Fig.5.b).
B. Test bench
The experimental test bench is composed
components as shown in Fig.6, the first one is the gyroscope
which includes the DC motors, three sensors. The second
component consists of the software real time interface
(Matlab/Simulink and Control Desk) with the hardware
device includes a real time embedded control board
(dSPACE 1103), and a Pc. The third one includes ECP
power supply, more details of the experimental system
are given in the [15]. The data acquire D/A converter
and encoders can provide gyroscope positions and speeds
C. Experimental results
In this part, the classical and the PFTC controllers are
implemented in order to evaluate their performances and
robustness's. The purpose of the PFTC is to maintain
the stability and performance after the occurrence of the
of 03 fault and we discuss the effect of the experimental PFTC
under appearing fault sensor. The experimental considered
section is subdivided on two cases: the nominal and faulty
cases. For the nominal case, the synthesized state feedback
controller and second order sliding mode PFTC controllers
are implemented to track the desired angular position
gimbal axis 3 (e3). The plots of the experimental responses
are given in the Fig.8 and Fig.7. The two controllers
present good performances with high tracking of the desired
reference. The state feedback controller offers a good

408
 Real time Controldesk Interface

ECP Power Supply

r-J
�

Sensors

Fig. 6. Experimental test bench

! !
12 12

" "
� �
'0 10 '0 10

�0. �0.
� �
8 B

Fig. 7. Angular position of gimbal axis 3 using state feedback without Fig. 9. Angular position of gimbal axis 3 using PFTC control without fault
fault

Fig. 10. PFTC control input without fault

Fig. 8. State feedback control input without fault

are evaluated under sensor fault in the presence of the

performance than the PFTC controller in the nominal case
because we have included the fault in the synthesize phase
of the PFTC controllers.
In the faulty case, we are interested to the implementation
of the state feedback and PFTC controllers in order to
track the desired angular trajectory. These controllers
additive fault (noise measurement). The Fig.ll and Fig.13
correspond respectively to the state feedback and PFTC
controller responses, it can be easily seen that the evolution
in time of the gyroscope angular position is performed in
case of the PFTC robust controller in the transient phase and
steady tracking errors when the occurring fault. However
for the classical controller, we can note that the degradation

409
Fig. 11. Angular position of gimbal axis 3 with state feedback control in
faulty case
Fig. 12. State feedback control input in faulty case
of the performance and the system becomes unstable. To
highlight the control scheme, it is worth to analyze the
control input responses of DC motor (Fig.12 and Fig.14).
It can be noted that it exhibits the saturation in the case
of state feedback controller when the fault appears. This
harmful phenomenon causes the degradation of the DC
motors.
V. CONCLUSION
A sensor passIve fault tolerant control based on second
order sliding mode strategy is developed for a gyroscope
system. It relies on the experimental evaluation of the control
scheme. The twisting algorithm PFTC design ensures an ac­
ceptable performance and keeps the gyroscope stability under
the sensor fault. Appreciable performances and robustness of
the PFTC against the sensor fault are assessed by simulation
and experimental results. The main purposes were to inspect
both performance and stability under failure occurrence. As
perspective in future works an active fault tolerant control
will be developed and other type of senor orland actuator
faults will be explored.
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