This research work presents a fault-tolerant flight guidance and control framework to deal with damaged aircraft. Damaged scenarios include the loss of thrust, actuator malfunction and airframe damage. The developed framework objective is to ensure that damaged aircraft can be stabilized and controlled at all times. The guidance system is responsible for providing the airspeed, vertical and horizontal flight path angle commands while considering aircraft dynamics. The control system, designed by the nonlinear state-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) control method, is used to track the guidance commands and to stabilize the damaged aircraft. The versatility of SDRE allows it to passively adapt to the aircraft parameter variations due to damage. A novel nonlinear adaptive control law is proposed to improve the controller performance. The new control law demonstrated improved tracking ability. The framework is implemented on the nonlinear Boeing 747 and NASA Generic Transport Model (GTM) to investigate the simulation results.

This research work presents a fault-tolerant flight guidance and control framework to deal with damaged aircraft. Damaged scenarios include the loss of thrust, actuator malfunction and airframe damage. The developed framework objective is to ensure that damaged aircraft can be stabilized and controlled at all times. The guidance system is responsible for providing the airspeed, vertical and horizontal flight path angle commands while considering aircraft dynamics. The control system, designed by the nonlinear state-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) control method, is used to track the guidance commands and to stabilize the damaged aircraft. The versatility of SDRE allows it to passively adapt to the aircraft parameter variations due to damage. A novel nonlinear adaptive control law is proposed to improve the controller performance. The new control law demonstrated improved tracking ability. The framework is implemented on the nonlinear Boeing 747 and NASA Generic Transport Model (GTM) to investigate the simulation results.