Sliding Mode Reconfigurable Control Using Information on the Control Effectiveness of Actuators

In this paper, a sliding mode reconfigurable control algorithm is developed to deal with nonlinear aircraft system with partial loss fault or total loss failure of actuators. Sliding mode controllers for redundant actuators are combined with those for regular actuators to reconfigure the control system autonomously with the effectiveness information of the regular actuators. The tolerability of the sliding mode control system for faults is defined as the limit of regular actuators under fault conditions. The stability of the control algorithm is proved with Lyapunov method. The effectiveness of the developed control system has been validated on simulation of the longitudinal control of a nonlinear Boeing 747-100/200 airplane model.