Combined Fault Detection, Isolation, and Control: Propulsion Controlled Aircraft in Case of Elevator Failure

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) system with a Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) scheme for the total control surface failures of a commercial aircraft. Since a Propulsion Controlled Aircraft (PCA) is a very challenging task, little attention has been paid to the analysis and design of the overall system including both a FDI scheme and a FTC system. We propose an overall Fault-Tolerant Flight Control (FTFC) system for the back up of the full loss of hydraulic systems. The reconfigurable controller with Simple Adaptive Control (SAC) is automatically tuned and switched based on the fault parameters estimated by a FDI scheme. This method also enables us to ensure the nominal flight performance in fault free situations. In this study, after the full loss of elevator control occurs on the aircraft, the pitch angle can be controlled by the engine thrust input instead of the the elevator input.