FAULT TOLERANT CONTROL USING MINIMAL CONTROLLER SYNTHESIS FOR THE X-38 CREW RETURN VEHICLE

摘要

Next generation re-useable space vehicles are at risk from actuator failures or damage during the atmospheric reentry phase. Reconfigurable control systems adapt to changes in dynamics due to such events, and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) is an architecture that has been successfully applied to this problem. The proposed system incorporates explicit control allocation (CA) and a new MRAC algorithm requiring minimal controller synthesis. A novel modification is presented to prevent gain-windup, a common problem for adaptive control.