Fault‐Tolerant Control of Post‐Stall Maneuver for Fighter Aircraft Against Center of Gravity Shift and Actuator Faults

ABSTRACT Addressing the challenge of fault‐tolerant control and control allocation (CA) during post‐stall maneuver of fighter aircraft equipped with thrust vectoring, a fault‐tolerant control strategy is proposed. First, aiming at the effect on flight quality of the center of gravity shift caused by factors like uneven fuel combustion and structural damages during the post‐stall maneuver, a predefined time extended state observer is proposed to estimate and compensate for the effects of center of gravity shift, strong coupling and modeling errors. Additionally, a fault diagnosis system is developed to address potential actuator faults, enabling diagnosis of fault occurrence, fault type and fault information. Furthermore, a fault‐tolerant CA method, inspired by the concept of daisy chain, is used to enhance the longevity of the thrust vectoring nozzle. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified by numerical simulation.