Retrospective Cost Adaptive Control of Generic Transport Model Under Uncertainty and Failure

Abstract

This paper presents a case study on the application of retrospective cost adaptive control to the NASA generic transport model under conditions of uncertainty and failure. To apply retrospective cost adaptive control to the generic transport model, a collection of control architectures is defined, where each architecture has a decentralized adaptation structure in the sense that a performance (error) variable is assigned to each control channel for online decentralized adaptation. Sensor signals may be shared among the channels to account for channel coupling. Then, a series of cases that examine the performance of retrospective cost adaptive control under various conditions is considered, including trim finding, startup, unknown time-varying aircraft dynamics (such as icing and mass variation), unknown flight envelope (including the possibility of conflicting commands), known sensing constraints (a failed air data system), known actuation constraints (requiring differential thrust), unknown sensor failur...