Adaptive Fault Detection and Fault-Tolerant Control of NASA Generic Transport Aircraft Model*

In this paper, adaptive fault detection and fault-tolerant control schemes for aircraft flight systems are investigated and evaluated on a high-fidelity aircraft model–the nonlinear NASA generic transport model. State feedback for output tracking and output feedback for output tracking multivariable model reference adaptive control schemes are developed, where plant-model matching conditions are much less restrictive than that of the state feedback for state tracking design, to ensure stability and asymptotic output tracking for the aircraft in the presence of uncertain actuator failures and structural damage. Based on an aircraft system dynamic coupling feature and different actuator failure patterns, adaptive detectors are constructed to detect damage and actuator failures. Our adaptive detection schemes are equipped with feedback fault-tolerant control to ensure signal boundedness requirement. Desired performance of the developed schemes is demonstrated by extensive simulation studies on the nonlinear NASA generic transport model.