Time-Varying Aerodynamic Parameter Estimation and Adaptive Dynamic Inversion Control of Aircrafts with Uncertain Actuator Faults

This paper addresses the flight control problem of high performance aircraft subject to aerodynamic parameter uncertainties and unknown control surface failures. First, the influence of control surface failures on flight performance is analyzed, and a nonlinear aircraft model incorporating actuator faults is established. Then, a parameterized model suitable for online identification is constructed, and an adaptive aerodynamic parameter estimation algorithm based on variable-rate forgetting recursive least-squares is proposed to achieve realtime parameter estimation. On this basis, a hierarchical faulttolerant control scheme based on adaptive dynamic inversion is developed, which integrates outer loop position and trajectory control with inner loop attitude and angular rate control, enabling real-time dynamic compensation under unknown actuator faults and command tracking of flight altitude, lateral displacement and sideslip angle. Finally, numerical simulations based on an F-16 aircraft model validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the designed parameter estimation algorithm can effectively estimate the time-varying aerodynamic parameters, and the fault-tolerant control scheme is able to maintain satisfactory tracking performance and system stability in the presence of uncertain elevator failure.