Passive Fault-Tolerant Control of Flying-Wing UAV with Actuator Faults Based on Conventional Fixed-Wing Autopilots

This paper proposes a passive fault-tolerant control (PFTC) strategy for flying-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to actuator faults. The method is developed based on conventional fixed-wing autopilots and addresses the unique challenges of flying-wing configurations, including strong actuator coupling and high fault sensitivity. Actuator faults are modeled as lumped disturbances, which are estimated online and compensated within the control loop. A dynamic control allocation scheme based on quadratic programming distributes commands among redundant actuators while ensuring control effectiveness under physical constraints. Simulation results on a high-fidelity flying-wing UAV model demonstrate that the proposed method effectively maintains stable flight and velocity tracking performance under multiple actuator fault scenarios without requiring fault detection or control reconfiguration.