Fault detection and isolation of an aircraft using set-valued observers

This paper describes an application of a new fault detection and isolation (FDI) technique based on set-valued observers (SVOs) to a linear parameter varying (LPV) longitudinal aircraft dynamic model. The FDI strategy adopted herein computes and uses the set-valued estimates of the SVOs to eliminate models of the plant that are not compatible with the set of observations provided by the aircraft sensor suite and actuation data. The design of the SVOs takes into account model uncertainty and disturbances, thus avoiding false alarms due to such perturbations. The behavior of the proposed solution is assessed in simulation, by deliberately generating hard and soft sensor/actuator faults. The results show that the faults take, in general, only a few iterations to be detected and isolated, therefore paving the way for the use of the proposed methodology in practical applications.