Flight Control Failure Detection and Control Redistribution Using Multiple Model Adaptive Estimation with Filter Spawning

Failure detection for aircraft sensor and actuator/actuating-surface systems and flight control redistribution in response to failed actuators/surfaces is an important research area. With the advent of faster flight control computers with greater memory available, parallel adaptive estimators can now be used to determine sensor and flight control actuator/surface failures. Since most of the sensors are somewhat functionally redundant, when a sensor is lost, the information it would have provided could be estimated from other operational sensors using a Kalman Filter. If a flight control actuator or surface fails, then a system having access to all the other flight control actuators/surfaces can properly adjust the remaining control actuators/surfaces (i.e., employ control redistribution) in order to achieve the commanded maneuver. Research has been accomplished in this area using Multiple Model Adaptive Estimation (MMAE) to detect failures.