Closed-loop Control System for the Reliability of Intelligent Mechatronic Systems

So-called reliability adaptive systems are able to adapt their system behavior based on the current reliability of the system. This allows them to react to changed operating conditions or faults within the system that change the degradation behavior. To implement such reliability adaptation, self-optimization can be used. A self-optimizing system pursues objectives, of which the priorities can be changed at runtime, in turn changing the system behavior. When including system reliability as an objective of the system, it becomes possible to change the system based on the current reliability as well. This capability can be used to control the reliability of the system throughout its operation period in order to achieve a pre-defined or user-selectable system lifetime. This way, optimal planning of maintenance intervals is possible while also using the system capabilities to their full extent. Our proposed control system makes it possible to react to changed degradation behavior by selecting objectives of the self-optimizing system and in turn changing the operating parameters in a closed loop. A two-stage controller is designed which is used to select the currently required priorities of the objectives in order to fulfill the desired usable lifetime. Investigations using a model of an automotive clutch system serve to demonstrate the feasibility of our controller. It is shown that the desired lifetime can be achieved reliably.