Hardware-in-the-loop evaluation of an LPV sliding mode fixed control allocation scheme on the MuPAL-α research aircraft

This paper develops a sliding mode fault tolerant control scheme based on an LPV system representation of the plant. The scheme involves a control allocation component, which is capable of fully utilizing the available actuators in the face of actuator faults. In this paper, information about the actuator faults is assumed not to be available and therefore a fixed control allocation structure is utilised in the event of faults. The proposed scheme is validated using the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Multi-Purpose Aviation Laboratory (MuPAL-α) research aircraft. This paper describes initial hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests which serve as a precursor to upcoming real flight tests. The validation results show good lateral-directional state tracking performance in the fault free case with no visible performance degradation in the presence of (aileron) faults. Successful HIL tests demonstrate the potential of the proposed scheme which will be flight tested later this year.