Integrated fault-tolerant flight control system with actuator amplitude saturation

An integrated control scheme using fault diagnosis and reconfigurable control is investigated in this paper for a commercial aircraft with actuator faults and amplitude saturation. Actuator faults and amplitude saturation are both important factors adversely affecting the stability and performance of flight control systems. The fault diagnosis process is designed based upon a modified multiple-model based unknown input observer and the reconfigurable control is constructed using adaptive control. Both additive and multiplicative faults are considered in the integrated design to deal with the three types of actuator faults. Moreover, different techniques are implemented in the basic and fault-tolerant controller to anti-windup. Finally, a numerical example of the integrated fault-tolerant controller for a Boeing -747 is demonstrated. The stability and performance improvements can be accrued with the presented fault-tolerant control scheme.