Active fault-tolerant control strategy for lateral motion of civil aircraft

As civil aircrafts require high requirement of reliability, the flight control system should make airplane safe at least when failure occurs. This paper proposed an active fault-tolerant control (AFTC) strategy for civil aircraft with ailerons stuck at different degrees. The baseline control law was designed based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) to guarantee lateral control stability and performance. On this basis, a reconfigurable controller was designed based on model reference for the supposed failures. The simulation of lateral motion under the numerical model of Boeing 747 was carried out with the consideration of the impact of spoilers. Comparing the simulation results under reconfigurable controller with AFTC strategy and only under basic controller, the AFTC strategy was proved to be effective precisely.