Robust fault-tolerant preview control for automatic landing of carrier-based aircraft

Purpose This paper aims to propose the automatic carrier landing system with the fault-tolerant ability for carrier-based aircraft in the presence of deck motion, external airwake disturbance and actuator fault, which consists of the reference trajectory generation module and flight control module. Design/methodology/approach The longitudinal and lateral basic controllers are designed based on the optimal preview control (OPC), which can ensure favorable tracking performance and anti-disturbance ability of system. Furthermore, based on the OPC, the robust fault-tolerant preview control scheme is proposed to attenuate the impact of actuator fault on system, which ensures the safe landing of carrier-based aircraft in case of actuator failure. Findings Both the Lyapunov method and simulations prove that the tracking errors can converge to zero and system states can be asymptotically stable both in normal and fault operations. Originality/value The fault-tolerant control strategy is introduced into preview control to deal with actuator fault, which combines feedforward control based on future previewable information and feedback control based on current information to improve the system performance.