Damage-mitigating control: an interdisciplinary thrust between controls and material science

The concept of damage mitigation for control applications is presented as a key concept in prolonging the service life of complex mechanical systems such as rocket engines and advanced aircraft. Achieved through a small reduction in system dynamic performance, service life improvement requires augmentation of the current system-theoretic techniques for synthesis of decision and control laws with governing equations and inequality constraints that would model the properties of the materials for the purpose of damage representation. This effort is challenged by the need to characterize the damage generation process in the continuous-time setting, and then use this information for synthesizing algorithms of robust control, diagnostics, and risk assessment in complex mechanical systems. An illustration of the potential benefits of using the concept in extending the life of a reusable rocket engine is presented.