Fault analysis and detection in large active optical systems

摘要

Active optical systems are complex systems that may be expected to operate in hostile environments such as space. The ability of such a system either to tolerate failures of components or to reconfigure to accommodate failed components could significantly increase the useful lifetime of the system. Active optical systems often contain hundreds of actuators and sensor channels but have an inherent redundancy, i.e., more actuators or sensor channels than the minimum needed to achieve the required performance. A failure detection and isolation system can be used to find and accommodate failures. One type of failure is the failure of an actuator. The effect of actuator failure on the ability of a deformable mirror to correct aberrations is analyzed using a finite-element model of the deformable mirror, and a general analytical procedure for determining the effect of actuator failures on system performance is given. The application of model-based failure detection, isolation and identification algorithms to active optical systems is outlined.