Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface
2018-06
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface
Authors
Published Date
2018-06
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
Small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have recently found increasing civilian and commercial applications. On-board fault management is one of several technical challenges facing their widespread use. The aerodynamic control surfaces of a fixed-wing UAS perform the safety-critical functions of stabilizing and controlling the aircraft. Failures in one or more of these surfaces, or the actuators controlling them, may be managed by repurposing the other control surfaces and/or propulsive devices. A natural question arises in this context: What is the minimum number of control surfaces required to adequately control a handicapped aircraft? The answer, in general, depends on the control surface layout of the aircraft under consideration. For some aircraft, however, the answer is one. If the UAS is equipped with only two control surfaces, such as the one considered in this thesis, then this limiting case is reached with a single control surface failure. This thesis demonstrates, via multiple flight tests, the autonomous landing of a UAS using only one aerodynamic control surface and the throttle. In seeking to arrive at these demonstrations, this thesis makes advances in the areas of model-based fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control. Specifically, a new convex method is developed for synthesizing robust output estimators for continuous-time, uncertain, gridded, linear parameter-varying systems. This method is subsequently used to design the fault diagnosis algorithm. The detection time requirement of this algorithm is established using concepts from loss-of-control. The fault-tolerant controller is designed to operate the single control surface for lateral control and the throttle for total energy control. The fault diagnosis algorithm and the fault-tolerant controller are both designed using a model of the aircraft. This model is first developed using physics-based first-principles and then updated using system identification experiments. Since this aircraft does not have a rudder, the identification of the lateral-directional dynamics requires some novelty.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. June 2018. Major: Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. Advisor: Peter Seiler. 1 computer file (PDF); xiii, 291 pages.
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
Venkataraman, Raghu. (2018). Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/206355.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.