A Fault-Tolerant and a Reconfigurable Control Framework: Application to a Real Manufacturing System

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a framework to implement a fault-tolerant and a reconfigurable distributed control approach in programmable logic controller (PLC) for manufacturing systems (MS). The reconfiguration methodology adopted in this paper is based on supervisory control theory (SCT), and it is triggered following sensor fault detection. The lost information about these sensors is replaced by timed information allowing the MS to continue its operations. The switch from a normal behavior to a degraded behavior when a sensor fault appears is ensured by reconfiguration rules. The main objective of our framework is to implement the obtained control into a PLC. To meet this objective, the distributed controllers of the two operating modes as well as the reconfiguration rules are interpreted into different Grafcet models. The implementation of these different models is verified by a checker-model technique before being tested on a digital twin and validated on a real MS.