Integrated fault estimation and fault-tolerant control for a flexible regional aircraft

The article focuses on the design and application of an active reconfigurable controller that mitigates the effects of gust load and actuator faults on a flexible aircraft. A novel integrated adaptive output feedback scheme is investigated to address the actuator faults. The real-time fault values provided by the fault estimation module are considered in the reconfigurable control law to improve the fault-tolerant capability. The estimate values of faults and control gains are calculated by analyzing the stability of the overall system. The proposed controller is simulated using a flexible aircraft model with a discrete ‘1-cosine’ gust, and the results show that it can effectively mitigate the wing root moments and recover the flight maneuver stability after the aircraft suffered from gusts.