Active fault tolerant flight control for UAV actuator failures

In this study, the parameter identification based fault tolerant control of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) dynamics is presented. When faults occur in the actuator, then the elements of the control distribution matrix (control derivatives) change. The augmented Kalman filter is used in order to identify the control distribution matrix elements; thus, the control reconfiguration is carried out using this identified control distribution matrix. A reconfigurable pseudo-inverse controller is designed for the modeled UAV. The control derivatives are identified by the augmented Kalman filter and pseudoinverse controller is reconfigured for the identified control distribution matrix. In simulations, the linearized model of longitudinal dynamics of the ZAGI UAV is considered, and the performance of the proposed system identification and reconfigurable control techniques are examined for this model. For this purpose the control derivatives related to elevator and thrust are changed in accordance with faulty system condition and the augmented Kalman filter based reconfigurable control algorithm using pseudo-inverse technique is investigated.