Reconfigurable flight control system design for blended wing body UAV based on control allocation

The aircraft control surface fault reconfigurable scheme based on control allocation is an active approach to achieve fault-tolerant in flight control. It has obvious advantages such as the structure and parameters of the control law does not need to be redesigned as deflector failures occurs. The attainable moment subset and allocation efficiency with typical control allocation algorithms are evaluated. A modular scheme reconfigurable flight control system (FCS) of a miniature tailless Blended Wing Body UAV is studied by utilizing weighted pseudo-inverse, direct control, and fixed-point control allocation methods. The performance of the reconfigurable FCS is tested and verified with the simulation including typical failure modes such as deflector floating, loss-of-effectiveness and lock-in-place. Results validate that the reconfigurable FCS based on control allocation has preferable ability to handle deflector failures, improve the safety and reliability of aircraft. And the modular scheme proposed in the article demonstrates a good application prospect in the field of aviation and aerospace engineering.