Fault-Tolerant Control of Fighter Aircraft using MPC

Control of fighter aircraft has always been a challenge. The demand for high-speed controllers increases while performing fast maneuvers. During fast maneuvers, the control surfaces reach their extreme limits. Due to high dynamic forces during fast maneuvers, the deflection limit of the control surfaces decreases which is called stall load or temporary fault. These faults may vary with time or with the complexity of the maneuver, hence should be catered for while designing the controller. In this paper, time-varying elevator fault has been controlled by MPC and fault detection module. The fault detection module finds the root mean square of the fault and sends a signal about the fault to the MPC module. The MPC module, in case of fault, applies reconfiguration on the control limit for a small period. After that period MPC again checks whether the fault is still there or not and reconfigure to the original limits in case of no-fault. A comparison has been made for an angle of attack tracking with and without FD module. The two results show that the MPC caters to time-varying faults generated during fast maneuvers in a better way when the FD module indicates the fault.