Virtual Commands in Control Allocation for Reconfigurable Flight Control Systems

For safety and reliability, fault-tolerant control of an aircraft is demanding. Control allocation, which is to allocate the upper-level control commands to redundant actuators according to optimization objectives and constraints, is one of the key problems in fault-tolerant control. In this paper, the aircraft moment equation for reconfigurable flight control establishes the virtual control commands for control allocation. To test the virtual control commands, straight and level flight under the condition of actuator failure is simulated using MATLAB/Simulink. The results show that the appropriate virtual control inputs and control allocation outputs can compensate for actuator faults without redesigning the controller to improve flight reliability and safety.