Adaptive compensation for infinite number of actuator failures with an application to flight control

In this paper, a new adaptive compensation control scheme is proposed for a class of nonlinear systems with unknown parameters and unknown actuator failures. The normal operation case and different failure cases of actuators are unified through a time-varying model. By introducing a smooth function, an integrable auxiliary signal, and a bound estimation approach, the effect of failures is successfully compensated for, and the total number of failures is not restricted to be finite. It is shown that all closed-loop signals are globally uniformly bounded, and the tracking error converges to zero asymptotically regardless of the possibly infinite number of actuator failures. An application to the longitudinal dynamic model of a twin otter aircraft is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.