Fault tolerant heading control system design for Turac unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

In this study, a fault tolerant heading control system is designed for a one-third scale fixed wing vertical takeoff-and-landing unmanned aerial vehicle, Turac. A nonlinear six degrees-of-freedom (DoF) mathematical model is obtained and linearized at the calculated trim flight condition. A proportional heading control system is designed as a nominal horizontal flight controller. Detection and isolation of the faults that can occur during flight are performed by Kalman filters which are designed individually for each sensor output. After the fault isolation process the obtained fault data is fed to the reconfigurable Kalman filter. Then the feedback signal from the faulty sensor is blocked and the estimated output from the reconfigurable Kalman filter is fed to the control system. So, the closed-loop system could follow the reference signal without updating the controller’s parameters. Simulation studies are performed on the closed-loop system for faulty sensor situations.