Design of fault-tolerant systems for actuator failures in nonlinear systems

Controller design for actuator failures in nonlinear systems is considered. Nonlinear regulator theory is employed to address the persistent disturbance caused by jammed actuators. An example of the aircraft longitudinal flight control is used to illustrate the design procedure. It is seen that the nonlinear regulators provide a larger window of safety than their linear counterpart especially in the face of time delays needed for identification of the actuator failures.