Stable Adaptive Reconfigurable Flight Control with Self-Diagnostics

In this paper a new approach to adaptive fault-tolerant control with self-diagnostics is presented. The approach is based on generating high-frequency signals for actuators with suspected failures, and minimizing the effect of those signals on the system state using the remaining healthy control surfaces. It is shown that the adjustment of parameters using a signal composed of the nominal control input, self-diagnostic signal and compensation signal, and the use of the corresponding parameter estimates in the control law results in a stable system in which the asymptotic convergence to zero is guaranteed for both the tracking and parameter errors. The properties of the proposed system are evaluated through simulations of a high- performance aircraft under multiple flight-critical failures.