Adaptive Fixed-Time Fault-Tolerant Attitude Tracking Control for Carrier-Based Aircraft

This paper investigates the fault-tolerant attitude tracking control for carrier-based aircraft based on fixed-time theory. The disturbances arising from the variation of translational motion and model uncertainties in attitude angle loop are regarded as lumped disturbance and addressed by using a fixed-time extended state observer (FESO). An adaptive fixed-time radial basis function neural network disturbance observer (FRBFNNDO) is designed to compensate the stern stream disturbance, model uncertainties and actuator faults in angular rate loop and achieve fault-tolerant control. Meanwhile, the 'differential explosion' problem in backstepping design is effectively avoided by introducing a fixed-time filter. Importantly, the tracking error and the observer estimation error are rigorously demonstrated to converge to a small region in the fixed time. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant attitude tracking control algorithm.