A Multiple-Model Based Adaptive Actuator Failure Compensation Scheme for Control of Near-Space Vehicles*

This paper presents a new adaptive actuator failure compensation control scheme for nonlinear systems motivated from a near space vehicle control application, using a multiple-model failure estimation and control approach. Such a design employs multiple controllers, each of which is designed for each failure pattern in the failure pattern set of interest and is constructed with parameters from adaptive estimates of the failure parameters of a specific actuator failure. Each estimator is based on a complete parametrization of the corresponding actuator failure. A switching mechanism is set up, based on finding the minimal performance cost index from the estimation errors, to select the most appropriate controller to generate the current control signal. Simulation results from the attitude control of a near space vehicle dynamic model in the presence of uncertain actuator failures are presented to show the desired adaptive actuator failure compensation performance.