Fault-tolerant attitude tracking control for carrier-based aircraft using RBFNN-based adaptive second-order sliding mode control

Abstract

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant attitude tracking control for carrier-based aircraft with external disturbances and actuator faults, which is based on backstepping control, second-order sliding mode control (SOSMC) and the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) adaptation algorithm. First, the generic attitude dynamic model of carrier-based aircraft is presented. Based on backstepping method, the attitude control system is divided into two simple and low-order subsystems. Then, the basic SOSMC using the type of proportional integral (PI) sliding mode variable are designed respectively for two subsystems, which can guarantee the system stable with no chattering in the finite time. To compensate for disturbances and faults more accurately, we design RBFNN-based adaptive second-order sliding mode control (RASOSMC) where RBFNN algorithm is utilized to approximate the lumped perturbation, which attenuates the impact of disturbances and faults more effectively and improves attitude tracking performance. Furthermore, the adaptive online algorithms for the RBFNN weights are proposed based on Lyapunov theory. Finally, numerical simulation results are given to indicate the effectiveness and robustness of the SOSMC scheme and RASOSMC scheme.