Development of fault-tolerant flight control systems in realistic environment

当一个人坐在飞机上或开车时，最关心的是什么？如果答案是飞机或汽车的“安全性”，那就不足为奇了。这是一个与此类安全关键型系统的可靠性、安全性和容错控制有关的问题。提高安全关键系统的可靠性和安全性，例如飞机、航天器、汽车、核电站、化学或石化工厂，是极其重要的，因为这些系统中的故障的后果可能是灾难性的。有必要设计能够容忍这些系统中的潜在故障的控制系统，以提高可靠性和可用性，同时提供理想的性能。这种类型的控制系统通常被称为容错控制系统（FTCS）。特别是，应用于飞行控制的FTCS被称为容错飞行控制系统（FTFCS）。这项拟议研究的主要目标是为FTFCS设计和分析提供先进且实用的解决方案，其中纳入FTFCS中现实的物理约束和实际考虑因素，以便本研究的结果与加拿大航空航天工业相关并直接适用。简短的长期目标是在真实的试验环境中，根据高保真度和高度非线性的飞机模型，开发、分析和试验不同的和有效的FTFCS设计。在飞行或着陆阶段出现作动器和操纵面故障以及机翼严重发动机分离损伤的情况下，将开发先进和实用的故障诊断和可重构飞行控制方案。长期目标是开发一个完整的理论FTFCS，从分析，综合，仿真，飞行模拟器测试，和实际的工程应用，并将开发的容错飞行控制技术转移到加拿大航空和航天工业的竞争优势。

What is the most important concern when one sits on the airplane or drives a car? It would not be surprising for the answer to be the "safety" of the airplane or car. This is an issue relevant to the reliability, safety and fault-tolerant control of such types of safety-critical systems. Improving the reliability and safety of safety-critical systems, such as airplanes, space vehicles, automobiles, nuclear power plants, chemical or petrochemical plants, is extremely important since the consequences of failures in such systems can be catastrophic. It is necessary to design control systems that are capable of tolerating potential failures in these systems to improve the reliability and availability whilst providing desirable performance. This type of control systems is often known as Fault-Tolerant Control Systems (FTCS). In particular, FTCS applied to flight control are referred to as Fault-Tolerant Flight Control Systems (FTFCS).The main objective of this proposed research is to provide advanced and practical solutions for FTFCS design and analysis which incorporate realistic physical constraints and practical considerations in FTFCS so that the results from this research are relevant and directly applicable to the aerospace industries in Canada.The short-term objectives are to develop, analyze and test different and effective FTFCS designs based on high-fidelity and highly nonlinear aircraft models in realistic test environments. Advanced and practical schemes for fault diagnosis and reconfigurable flight control in the presence of actuators and control surfaces failures and severe engine separation damages of wings during flight or landing phase will be developed. The long-term objectives are to develop a complete theory of FTFCS ranging from analysis, synthesis, simulation, flight simulator test, and practical engineering applications and to transfer the developed fault-tolerant flight control technologies to Canadian aeronautical and aerospace industries with a competitive edge.