Robust fault-tolerant control for longitudinal dynamics of aircraft with input saturation

A robust fault-tolerant control scheme is proposed for the longitudinal dynamics of an aircraft with input saturation, using the anti-windup method and the fault detection observer technology. To estimate the system fault, a detection observer is designed for the longitudinal dynamics, and a fault-tolerant control law is developed to compensate for the fault effects of the longitudinal dynamics. Then, an anti-windup compensator is augmented into the fault-tolerant control law to eliminate the effect of input saturation. Using linear matrix inequality (LMI) technology, the detection observer based fault-tolerant controller is designed to ensure the stability of the closed-loop system and the convergence of the detection observer. Finally, the developed robust fault-tolerant control scheme is applied to the longitudinal model of an aircraft and simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. © 2016, Editorial Department of Transactions of NUAA. All right reserved.