Hybrid active-passive fault-tolerant control for carrier landing subject to control surface effectiveness loss

During the carrier landing of carrier-based aircraft, strong disturbances such as complex harsh marine environment, deck motion, and ship stern flow significantly increase the probability of control surface faults, which may degrade landing control accuracy and even lead to instantaneous flight instability. This paper integrates the advantages of passive fault-tolerant control and active fault-tolerant control, and proposes an active-passive composite fault-tolerant flight control method based on direct lift control. Firstly, to address the abrupt change in the response characteristics of carrier-based aircraft at the initial stage of control surface faults, a passive fault-tolerant control method based on predefined-time global fast terminal sliding mode is designed to ensure the instantaneous flight stability of carrier-based aircraft within a prescribed time and improve the robustness of the control system. Then, to satisfy the high-precision control requirements in the terminal landing phase, an active adaptive reconfigurable control method based on online identification is designed to enhance the attitude and trajectory tracking control capability of faulty carrier-based aircraft. Finally, mathematical simulations and engineering application simulation tests are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method under elevator and flap damage faults. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method possesses stronger robustness and better control performance than the direct-lift Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) landing control method and the single passive or active fault-tolerant control under different degrees of control surface damage.