Finite-time sliding mode fault-tolerant control of PEM fuel cell air supply system

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell air supply system is primarily responsible for delivering air to the fuel cell at a specific stoichiometric ratio for chemical reaction. The stoichiometric ratio will be impacted by the sudden change in load and system failure. Under the aforementioned circumstances, precise and timely air supply regulation is required to avoid irreparable PEM damage. In order to enhance the robustness and performance of the fuel cell, a cascaded finite time sliding mode fault-tolerant control method is proposed for the air supply system of PEMFC. The control objective is to adjust the oxygen excess ratio at the cathode flow field, which can avoid the occurrence of oxygen starvation in the PEM fuel cell when the load current changes rapidly or when fault occurs. A cascaded controller structure is introduced, where, in the inner loop, an adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to reconstruct fault signal and track the optimal output trajectory and, in the outer loop, a finite-time observer is employed to obtain the expected output trajectory. The proposed control scheme is capable of fault-tolerant tracking of the optimal oxygen excess ratio within finite time. The effectiveness of proposed fault-tolerant control algorithm is verified through hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) studies. © 2024 Chinese Automatic Control Society and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.