Fault-tolerant controller design based on adaptive backstepping for tower cranes with actuator faults

Due to the widespread application and significant investment required for a single crane, there is an increased emphasis on crane safety and service life. Fault-tolerant control as an effective solution to unexpected faults has been widely studied recently. However, most fault-tolerant control methods require redundant actuators or a complex design process, which is unsuitable for the tower crane. Following these problems, a fault-tolerant controller based on an adaptive backstepping technique is proposed. Firstly, the system states are reconstructed and written as a cascade system. Secondly, a fixed-time convergence optimized backstepping controller is proposed to achieve smooth control of the tower crane without generating sudden or abrupt values. Then, an adaptive approach has been proposed to update fault parameters for the crane system in case of a sudden fault occurrence. Finally, after conducting comparison tests, it has been determined that the proposed controller not only performs exceptionally well in terms of position accuracy and swing elimination, but also maintains a satisfactory control performance when faced with sudden faults.