Virtual sensor for failure detection, identification and recovery in the transition phase of a morphing aircraft

Abstract

The Helicopter Adaptive Aircraft (HADA) is a morphing aircraft which is able to take-off as a helicopter and, when in forward flight, unfold the wings that are hidden under the fuselage, and transfer the power from the main rotor to a propeller, thus morphing from a helicopter to an airplane. In this process, the reliable folding and unfolding of the wings is critical, since a failure may determine the ability to perform a mission, and may even be catastrophic. This paper proposes a virtual sensor based Fault Detection, Identification and Recovery (FDIR) system to increase the reliability of the HADA aircraft. The virtual sensor is able to capture the nonlinear interaction between the folding/unfolding wings aerodynamics and the HADA airframe using the navigation sensor measurements. The proposed FDIR system has been validated using a simulation model of the HADA aircraft, which includes real phenomena as sensor noise and sampling characteristics and turbulence and wind perturbations. © 2010 by the authors.