Robust Fault-Tolerant Control Allocation for an Input-Redundant Aircraft

Abstract

A new scheme of robust fault-tolerant control allocation is designed for a discrete-time aerodynamic model in a research environment (ADMIRE) aircraft model in this paper. The control strategy has two steps. In the first step, a discrete-time robust virtual controller is designed to produce three axis moments. In the second step, the fault information will be used to reconfigure the robust fault-tolerant control allocation once an actuator fault is detected. A fault-detection scheme is assumed to exist for estimating the actuator fault. The robust virtual controller and the proposed robust fault-tolerant control allocation are applied to a discrete-time ADMIRE aircraft model. Simulation results demonstrate that the reference signals can be well tracked when the control surface is damaged. Thus the proposed robust fault-tolerant control allocation scheme is valid for input-redundant systems to recover from control surface failure, and simultaneously guarantee robustness to the uncertain control effectiveness matrix and disturbance.