Fault tolerant control based on cuckoo search algorithm for a class of morphing aircraft

According to the control allocation problem of a class of distributed frame morphing aircraft with actuator fault, combining with the theory of integer programming, a fault tolerant control method based on the cuckoo search algorithm is proposed. Firstly, a virtual control command is designed to ensure that the system states can track the reference model well. Afterwards, the probabilistic faults and saturation constrains of actuators are transformed into the constraints of decision variables in integer programming, which converts the problem of actuator control allocation into a type of integer programming problem. Finally, an improved cuckoo search algorithm is employed to solve the problem by obtaining the actual actuator control allocation commands. Simulation results illustrate that when the probabilistic actuator failures are considered, compared with the case without fault tolerant strategy, the developed fault tolerant control method can ameliorate the tracking capability of the system. The actuator control allocation results obtained by the proposed algorithm are more accurate comparing with those generated with genetic algorithm.