Fractional observer to estimate periodical forces.

In the present work we propose a fractional state observer with constant gain to estimate the periodical force exerted on a mechanical system by measuring only its displacement. The state observer is designed from both the Fourier series that approximates the periodical force and the equations of the damped harmonic oscillator that represents the behavior of the system. Specifically, the reconstruction of the force is carried out from the estimates of the series coefficients, which in fact are part of the dynamical system that composes the observer. Adams-Bashforth-Moulton method is used to compute the fractional derivatives of the observer in the Liouville-Caputo sense. Experiments based on real data are presented to show the advantages of using a fractional observer in the reconstruction of forces.

Sensor fault detection and isolation system for a condensation process.

This article presents the design of a sensor Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) system for a condensation process based on a nonlinear model. The condenser is modeled by dynamic and thermodynamic equations. For this work, the dynamic equations are described by three pairs of differential equations which represent the energy balance between the fluids. The thermodynamic equations consist in algebraic heat transfer equations and empirical equations, that allow for the estimation of heat transfer coefficients. The FDI system consists of a bank of two nonlinear high-gain observers, in order to detect, estimate and to isolate the fault in any of both outlet temperature sensors. The main contributions of this work were the experimental validation of the condenser nonlinear model and the FDI system.