Non-certainty-equivalent adaptive fault-tolerant flight control for unmanned aerial vehicles

Aiming at the tracking control problem of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with actuator compound faults, an adaptive fault-tolerant flight control scheme is developed based on the non-certainty-equivalence (NCE) principle in this paper. This scheme is capable of estimating the efficiency loss and drift faults in the longitudinal dynamics of UAV and ensuring the optimal index of the closed-loop system after the fault occurring. By introducing the auxiliary system and dynamical scaling factor, the approximating solution is constructed for the partial differential equation of the NCE principle, and the design complexity of the adaptive law is accordingly simplified. In addition, the stability of the closed-loop system is proved by using the Lyapunov stability analysis method. Finally, simulation results show that the developed control scheme can ensure the closed-loop system performance of the UAV even under the fault occurs. © 2024 South China University of Technology. All rights reserved.