Fault tolerant control synthesis for a cluster of rocket engines

This article presents a fault-tolerant control (FTC) reconfiguration scheme designed to mitigate the impact of on-board failures in launch vehicles equipped with clustered rocket engines. The proposed recovery strategy makes use of a dynamic allocation function and replaces the nominal thrust vector control (TVC) controller with an FTC-based controller explicitly designed to be robust against a predefined failure scenario. Specifically, the FTC methodology is demonstrated for a 60% loss of thrust in a single engine. The FTC control design problem is formulated within the structured H ∞ control framework, incorporating the failure directly into the design process via modeling. Simulation results confirm that the FTC controller effectively achieves the desired control objectives, demonstrating its robustness and efficacy in handling engine failures.