Fault Tolerant Control Schemes for Nonlinear Models of Aircraft and Spacecraft Systems

This paper explains the design method of an innovative active fault tolerant control scheme and the achieved results regarding its application to aerospace nonlinear models. The proposed method keeps the already in–place control and guidance laws and adds a feedback loop that accommodates the fault. The kernel of this active fault tolerant control consists of the fault detection and diagnosis module designed by using the nonlinear geometric approach. Thanks to this approach fault estimates are analytically decoupled from both the other faults and disturbances. The novel active fault tolerant control has been tested by using high fidelity simulators of aircraft and spacecraft systems, whilst the performances show the method robustness with respect to disturbance effects and measurement errors. The results obtained demonstrate how the proposed design methodology could be a successful approach for the reliable design of fault tolerant control schemes in real aircraft and spacecraft applications.