Open Research Issues

This chapter proposes some new ideas regarding the developments in advanced control, condition monitoring and innovative strategies for technical processes and industrial plants that allow us to both maximize the system performance and reduce their installation, operation and maintenance costs. It focuses on the design of suitable control schemes that enable lighter mechanical structures with improved performances and improved working conditions. A good understanding of typical faults in system components are exploited together with use of this knowledge to build in tolerance to faults in the control system. Fault accommodation in the sensing system can be achieved using estimator reconfiguration and/or fault estimation and compensation methods based, for example, on geometric and fuzzy approaches. The developed sensing and control systems are to be tested and verified on industrial process and power plant high-fidelity simulators and the technological demonstrator of dynamic systems.