Design of Residual Generators for Aircraft Fault Diagnosis

This paper addresses the problem of the detection and isolation of actuator faults on a general aviation aircraft, characterised by a non--linear model, in the presence of wind gust disturbances. In particular, this work investigates the design of residual generators in order to realise complete diagnosis schemes when additive faults are present. The use of a canonical input--output polynomial description for the linearised model of the aircraft allows to compute in a simple way the residual generators for FDI task. These tools seem to lead to dynamic filters that can guarantee both disturbance signal decoupling and robustness properties with respect to linearisation errors and disturbance. The results obtained in the simulation of the faulty behaviour of a Piper PA30 are finally reported