Reconfigurable control for active management of aircraft system failures

In this paper, we describe development of a distributed failure detection and isolation system for commuter and business aircraft. In particular, we examine a nonlinear continuous/discrete system with mechanical components that can experience abrupt, partial, or full faults. The faults are discrete events, which lead to a simple hybrid model. We construct an aircraft model, suitable for simulation studies, allowing for several candidate failure scenarios (e.g., aircraft icing, failures of control surface actuators, stuck or floating control surfaces, etc.) that are amenable to improved control solutions. The failure detection, isolation and recovery technique identifies both discrete mode changes and continuous parameter values.