Fast fixed-time incremental backstepping fault-tolerant control for aircraft with asymmetric wing damage

This paper presents a fast fixed-time incremental fault-tolerant control for fixed-wing aircraft to counteract asymmetric wing damage and actuator hybrid faults. A novel fast fixed-time incremental backstepping control is proposed to enhance the flight performance of damaged aircraft. Additionally, a fast fixed-time filter is constructed to avoid the “explosion of complexity”. Importantly, a fast fixed-time disturbance observer is presented to compensate for the effects of state differentiation disturbances, thus solving the issue that the robustness of incremental control depends on the feedback state differentiation. Then, it is rigorously demonstrated that the developed closed-loop fault-tolerant control system is fixed-time stable, with a convergence time is not related to the initial state errors. Finally, hardware-in-the-loop experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fault-tolerant control exhibits excellent control performance and robustness, effectively overcoming the effects of asymmetric wing damage and disturbances in state differentiation, thereby significantly improving both flight safety and performance.