Prescribed Performance Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Control for Nonlinear System with Actuator Faults and Dead Zones

This study proposes an adaptive fault-tolerant control strategy for parametric strict-feedback systems subject to actuator faults and unknown dead-zone nonlinearities, a combination that presents significant challenges for controller design. First, a novel prescribed-performance fault-tolerant control framework is developed by incorporating a funnel function, a barrier Lyapunov function, and a bounded estimation mechanism to address the issue of multiple constrained nonlinear disturbances. Second, the proposed strategy offers two key improvements: (1) adequate compensation for the coupled effects of actuator faults and dead-zone nonlinearities, and (2) guaranteed globally prescribed transient performance, making the settling time and tracking accuracy independent of initial conditions and design parameters. Lastly, simulation results verify the approach’s effectiveness, showing rapid convergence within 0.8 s and a tracking error bounded by ±0.05, thus surpassing traditional methods.