Title: Cascade ADRC-based fault-tolerant control for a PVTOL aircraft with potential actuator failures

Authors: Xinli Xu; Zhen Jiang; Huosheng Hu

Addresses: School of Mechatronics Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, China ' School of Mechatronics Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, China ' School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK

Abstract: This paper presents a novel reconfigurable control method for the planar vertical take-off and landing (PVTOL) aircraft with potential actuator failures. A cascade active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) is used to counteract the adverse effects when the actuator failure occurs. The coordinate transformation is used for model decoupling due to the severe coupling between some variables. This approach does not require the accurate mathematical model of the controlled system and ensures that the reference input value can be tracked rapidly and accurately. The stability and safety of the aircraft is much improved in the event of actuator failures. Finally, the simulation results are given to show the effectiveness and performance of the developed method.

Keywords: cascade ADRC; planar vertical take-off and landing; PVTOL aircraft; coordinate transformation; fault-tolerant control; FTC; actuator failure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2017.086559

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2017 Vol.28 No.3, pp.212 - 220

Received: 07 Oct 2016
Accepted: 08 Oct 2016

Published online: 12 Sep 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article