This paper addresses the problem of robust sensor faults detection and isolation in the air-path system of heavy-duty diesel engines, which has not been completely considered in the literature. Calibration or the total failure of a sensor can cause sensor faults. In the worst-case scenario, the engines can be totally damaged by the sensor faults. For this purpose, a second-order sliding mode observer is proposed to reconstruct the sensor faults in the presence of unknown external disturbances. To this aim, the concept of the equivalent output error injection method and the linear matrix inequality (LMI) tool are utilized to minimize the effects of uncertainties and disturbances on the reconstructed fault signals. The simulation results verify the performance and robustness of the proposed method. By reconstructing the sensor faults, the whole system can be prevented from failing before the corrupted sensor measurements are used by the controller.
Keywords: diesel engine; linear matrix inequality; robustness; sensor reliability; sliding mode observer.