Dynamics and Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Under Structure Damage of Horizontal Stabilizer

This chapter introduces a mathematical model and an adaptive flight controller designed to account for structural damage occurring in the horizontal stabilizer of an aircraft. The aerodynamic derivatives are determined by assessing the rate of structural damage sustained by the horizontal stabilizer. We establish a failure model that takes into consideration the aerodynamic derivatives resulting from the damaged horizontal stabilizer, and we adjust the efficiency coefficients based on wind tunnel experiments. To ensure active fault tolerance in the event of horizontal stabilizer damage, we devise an adaptive fault-tolerant control law using parameter estimation. The simulation and experimental results consistently demonstrate that the proposed model and adaptive fault-tolerant controller yield superior performance when the horizontal stabilizer has incurred damage.