Integrated diagnostics of rocket flight control

This paper describes an integrated approach to parametric diagnostics demonstrated in a flight control simulation of a space launch vehicle. The proposed diagnostic approach is able to detect incipient faults despite the natural masking properties of feedback in the guidance and control loops. Estimation of time varying fault parameters uses parametric vehicle-level data and detailed dynamical models. The algorithms explicitly utilize the knowledge of fault monotonicity (damage can only increase, never improve with time) where available. The developed algorithms can be applied to health management of next generation space systems. We present a simulation case study of rocket ascent application to illustrate and validate the proposed approach.