Multivariable Fault Tolerant Control for a Distributed Electric Propulsion Aircraft

This paper describes a control strategy for an aircraft with distributed electric propulsion and conventional aerodynamic control surfaces. Control algorithms are made of multivariable control laws with a control allocation system to effectively take advantage of the control input redundancy both in nominal conditions and in case of a fault occurring at one or more control effectors. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been demonstrated by means of numerical simulations, considering different simulation scenarios, also with faults injected during flight. Furthermore, a software prototype has been generated to verify the algorithms behavior in a real-time/software in the loop environment.