Adaptive Sliding-Mode Tracking Control Laws Applied to Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Systems

An adaptive sliding mode controller is presented for fault-tolerant flight control system against the loss-of-effectiveness actuator faults. This proposed scheme employs the robustness of adaptive sliding mode control to accommodate the faults effect on the system without the fault detection and isolation mechanism. The adaptive rules are derived from the Lyapunov stability theorem, and the closed-loop system stability is guaranteed. The numerical simulations are performed for an aircraft with independent and redundant control surfaces. Simulation results demonstrate the high accuracy tracking control performance under normal flight conditions, and show the acceptable performance and effectiveness of the proposed controller when faults occur.