Fault Diagnosis For Wave Energy Converters With Model Uncertainties

Unexpected sensor and actuator faults degrade the control performance and even introduce damage breaking down the wave energy converter (WEC) system. Fault detection for wave energy converters is of great importance in enhancing the reliability and robustness of WECs. This paper investigates a robust fault diagnosis method for single-point absorbers. An unknown input observer is designed to estimate the fault in real-time, which is robust against model uncertainties. This method can also be straightforwardly applied to other types of WEC. The parameters of the proposed observer can be calculated offline, which enhances the real-time implementation with a low computational burden. Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors.