Fault‐tolerant reference generation for model predictive control with active diagnosis of elevator jamming faults

Abstract

Summary This paper focuses on the longitudinal control of an Airbus passenger aircraft in the presence of elevator jamming faults. In particular, in this paper, we address permanent and temporary actuator jamming faults using a novel reconfigurable fault‐tolerant predictive control design. Due to their different consequences on the available control authority and fault duration, the above 2 actuator jamming faults need to be distinguished so that appropriate control reconfigurations can be adopted accordingly. Their similarity in symptoms, however, prevents an effective discrimination of the root cause of the jamming when using only a passive fault‐diagnosis approach. Hence, we propose the use of model predictive control (MPC) as a fault‐tolerant controller to actively help the fault‐detection (FD) unit discriminate between a permanent and a temporary jamming fault, while ensuring the performance of the aircraft. The MPC controller and the FD unit closely interact during the detection and diagnosis phases. In particular, every time a fault is detected, the FD module commands the MPC controller to perform a predefined sequence of reconfigurations to diagnose the root cause of the fault. An artificial reference signal that accounts for changes in the actuator operative ranges is used to guide the system through this sequence of reconfigurations. Our strategy is demonstrated on an Airbus passenger aircraft simulator.

Intelligent trajectory tracking of an aircraft in the presence of internal and external disturbances

“…First, the time required for the adaptation of the prediction model to the new dynamics of the system is significantly less than that for the fault identification and accommodation in the structure of conventional FTCs, which employ the FDI block. As an instance, the time required for the fault diagnosis in the work of Ferranti et al is about 0.8 seconds, where only the faults of the elevator have been studied in the paper. Next, in the current study, the prediction error converges continuously to zero, while conventional FDI blocks have a discontinuous characteristic, which means that the FDI block does not apply any change to the prediction model before the identification of the occurred fault.…”

“…The closed‐loop stability was proved considering the input constraints. A fault‐tolerant predictive control approach has been introduced in the work of Ferranti et al for an Airbus passenger aircraft in the presence of elevator jamming faults. A FD module has been employed in the paper, which commands the designed MPC to perform a set of predefined reconfigurations after the FD.…”

Constrained Active Fault Tolerant Control Based on Active Fault Diagnosis and Interpolation Optimization

“…This often further leads to the eventual loss of closed-loop stability. In the literature, some typical design methods for constrained FTC have been reported, such as Barrier Lyapunov function method [8], command governor [9,10], saturation control [11], model predictive control (MPC) [12], etc. Among these methods, the MPC-based FTC method is widely considered, since MPC has the inherent and flexible capacity to address constrained optimization problems.…”

Model-Based Condition-Monitoring and Jamming-Tolerant Control of an Electro-Mechanical Flight Actuator with Differential Ball Screws

“…The diagnostic monitoring requires that fault detection and isolation (FDI) algorithms are implemented and real-time executed by onboard control electronics [33][34][35][36], so that, in case of a detected jamming, redundant mechanical channels or unlock devices can be engaged [37,38]. Depending on how the mechanical redundancy is applied, after the fault compensation, the EMA can maintain its functionality, or it can be reverted in a stand-by mode, so that jamming-operative or jamming-safe EMAs are respectively obtained.…”