Incremental Backstepping Sliding Mode Fault-Tolerant Flight Control

Fault-tolerant flight control has the potential of improving the aircraft survivability in real life. This paper proposes an Incremental Backstepping Sliding Mode Control (IBSMC) framework for multi-input/output nonlinear strict-feedback systems considering model uncertainties, sudden faults, and external disturbances. This approach is a hybridization of the Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and a reformulated Incremental Backstepping (IBS). By virtue of the benefits contributed by both SMC and IBS, theoretical analyses prove IBSMC has less model dependency and enhanced robustness as compared to backstepping and backstepping hybridized with SMC (BSMC). When applied to an aircraft fault-tolerant control problem, numerical simulations demonstrate IBSMC can passively tolerate a wider range of model uncertainties, sudden actuator faults, and sudden structural damages as compared to backstepping and BSMC, using smooth control inputs with lower gains.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Control & Simulatio