International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems 16(3) (2018) 1355-1366 ISSN:1598-6446 eISSN:2005-4092

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12555-017-0294-9 http://www.springer.com/12555

A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct

Force Control
Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li*

Abstract: A new closed-loop control allocation method is proposed to distribute the force and moment increment
commands among multiple actuators at the same time. An innovative feedback configuration for the force and
moment increment produced by the actuators deflections is added into the trajectory and attitude control loop,
respectively. In addition, the trajectory and attitude controllers designed by nonlinear dynamic inversion are used
to derive the desired force and moment increment commands. Then, the stability of the closed-loop system is
guaranteed theoretically when the actuators are healthy and fail, where there is no a fault detection method to
identify the failure. Finally, the proposed method is used to achieve direct force control for decoupling the attitude
and flight trajectory in the longitudinal flight. The nonlinear simulation using Canard Rotor/Wing (CRW) aircraft
longitudinal model in fixed-wing mode demonstrates that this method can achieve two direct force control modes:
pitch pointing and direct lift, whether the actuators are healthy or fail.

Keywords: Closed-loop control allocation, decoupling control, direct force control, flight control, redundant actu-
ators.

1. INTRODUCTION ure. The transient performance during a controller recon-

Advanced aircraft often use redundant actuators to
achieve different task objectives and high control perfor-
mance. That is to say, the aircraft with more inputs than
controlled variables is an overactuated system. Control
allocation is able to distribute the control signals to the
available actuators in the appropriate manner [1]. Even
under the case of actuator failures, the effective control
reallocation can be implemented to maintain acceptable
performance without redesigning the control law.
Control allocation methods have been extensively in-
vestigated in the past few years. In the ideal condition,
there are many effective methods, such as pseudoinverse
allocation [2, 3], direct allocation [4, 5], daisy chain al-
location [6], linear or nonlinear programming allocation
[7, 8], dynamic control allocation [9, 10]. With the consid-
eration of the parameters uncertainty, robust control allo-
cation [11, 12] and adaptive control allocation [13, 14] are
proposed. In the face of actuator failures, fault-tolerant
controllers (FTCS) should be designed to ensure the safety
of the entire system [15–17]. In [18], the fault detection
and diagnosis schemes achieve fault diagnosis, and the
hybrid FTCS combining passive and active FTCS is pro-
posed to accommodate actuator loss of effectiveness fail-
figuration is considered in [19, 20]. In [21], the velocity-
free fault-tolerant control method based on sliding-mode
observer is proposed to accommodate actuator fault and
attenuate system uncertainty and external disturbance. In
[22], the fault-tolerant flight control based on sliding mode
and adaptive is proposed to accommodate actuator fault in
the presence of gyro or in the absence of gyro onboard. In
most cases redundancy is the key for FTCS [23], therefore,
fault-tolerant control allocation or reallocation [24, 25] is
proposed to accommodate actuator fault for the objects
with redundant actuators.
Generally speaking, most of the above control alloca-
tion methods are worked as an open-loop system. Re-
cently, a closed-loop constrained optimal control alloca-
tion scheme is proposed in [26] to distribute the moments
over the redundant actuators, and the asymptotic stability
of the closed-loop control allocation is guaranteed theo-
retically, however, the system stability is not considered
when the actuator failures occur.
In addition, most of the previous control allocation
methods focus on the moment distribution over the redun-
dant actuators, and the aircraft are able to track the de-
sired attitude command. However, there is little research
in distributing the force and moment over the redundant

Manuscript received May 22, 2017; revised September 12, 2017; accepted November 17, 2017. Recommended by Associate Editor Pinhas
Ben-Tzvi under the direction of Editor Fuchun Sun. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
61603220, 61333005, 61473177), the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2014FQ008, ZR2017BEE058), and the Qingdao
Post-doctor Applied Research Foundation (2015183).

Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li are with the College of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Shandong University of Sci-
ence and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China (e-mails: gwd2011@sdust.edu.cn, {master_sdust_2014, zjing133, yuxia_sdust}@163.com).
* Corresponding author.

⃝ICROS,
c KIEE and Springer 2018
1356 Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li
actuators at the same time.
Direct force control is a control concept which has
gained widely interest for improving the control perfor-
mance of modern aircraft with multiple actuators [27].
The aerodynamic forces acting on the aircraft are changed
directly using multiple actuators (such as canard and ele-
vator), while the aerodynamic moments acting on the air-
craft have no changes. That means the attitude and flight
trajectory of the aircraft are decoupled in the direct force
control, and the desired attitude and trajectory command
could be tracked at the same time. Therefore, the direct
force control can be used to improve aircraft maneuver-
ability in different flight tasks [28]. The direct force con-
trol can be achieved by eigenstructure assignment [29],
nonlinear dynamic inversion [30], and so on. However,
there are few research works in the direct control method
using control allocation method, and the actuator failures
are not considered. The reason may be that the control
allocation usually is used to distribute the moment com-
mand produced by the attitude controller rather than dis-
tributing both the moment command and the force com-
mand produced by the trajectory controller.
Based on the above analysis, a closed-loop control allo-
cation method with the force and moment increment feed-
back is proposed and used to achieve direct force control
whether the actuators are healthy or fail. The main contri-
butions of this work can be briefly concluded as follows:
1) To distribute the desired force and moment incre-
ment among multiple actuators at the same time, a new
closed-loop control allocation method is proposed. The
developed method has an innovative feedback configura-
tion with the force and moment increment which is differ-
ent from [26].
2) The closed-loop control allocation system stability
conditions are derived when the actuators are healthy or
fail.
3) The trajectory and attitude controllers designed by
nonlinear dynamic inversion are used to derive the desired
force and moment increments.
4) Comparing with the existing direct force con-
trol method, the proposed closed-loop control allocation
method is able to achieve two direct force control modes
when the actuators are healthy or fail.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 introduces the closed-loop force and moment
dynamic control allocation method, and the closed-loop
stability of this method is studied in Section 3. Subse-
quently, the direct force control conception is introduced,
and a longitudinal nonlinear model of Canard Rotor/Wing
aircraft in fixed-wing mode is used to demonstrate the pro-
posed method in Section 4. Finally, some conclusions and
future directions are described in Section 5.
2. CLOSED-LOOP FORCE AND MOMENT
DYNAMIC CONTROL ALLOCATION
As mentioned in the first section, the control alloca-
tion is very important for the aircraft with multiple actu-
ators. To improve the performance of control allocation,
the feedback of actual force increment and moment incre-
ment is added into the control system. A conceptual block
diagram of the closed-loop force and moment control allo-
cation is shown in Fig. 1. This closed-loop control alloca-
tion configuration is different from [26], and can distribute
the force and moment at the same time.
The forces F and moments M acting on the aircraft are
given as
{
F = F 0 + ∆F
F,
(1)
M = M 0 + ∆MM,
where F 0 and M 0 are determined by the aircraft configura-
tion and flight states, ∆FF and ∆M M are the force increments
and moment increments produced by the actuators deflec-
tions.
The control allocation problem is solved by the forces
and moments simultaneous allocation among different ac-
tuators in this paper.
In Fig. 1, the desired force and moment increments
[∆F M d ]T are derived by the trajectory and attitude
F d , ∆M
controller respectively in outer-loop, while the actual
force and moment increments [∆F M ]T are measured by
F , ∆M
the linear acceleration and angular acceleration sensors.
Then, the error v between the desired force & moment in-
crements and the actual force & moment increments is the
input of the dynamic control allocation. Thus, the output
of dynamic control allocation uv is the increment form and
one step delay is required. That is to say, the input of ac-
tuator is u (k) = u (k − 1) +uuv (k), and k denotes the current
sampling period. Therefore, we derive a closed-loop feed-
back system in inner-loop, which is composed of the input
(the desired force & moment increments) and the output
(the actual force & moment increments).
In this paper, the longitudinal direct force control is
considered, and the latitudinal direct force control can be
derived by the similar method. Therefore, the Equation(1)
is simplified to
{
Fz = Fz0 + ∆Fz ,
(2)
My = My0 + ∆My ,
where Fz is the longitudinal component of the resultant
force along the body axes, and My is the pitching moment.
2.1. The actual force & moment increments
The longitudinal nonlinear aircraft model is considered
as [31]
 A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct Force Control 1357

Fig. 1. Closed-loop force and moment control allocation configuration.



 V̇x = −qVz + Fx /m, Define Fz0 = −L0 cos α − D sin α + mg cos θ and ∆Fz =



 V̇z = qVx + Fz /m, −∆L cos α , equation (6) can be simplified to



 q̇ = My /Jy ,
(3) Fz = Fz0 + ∆Fz . (7)

 θ̇ = q,



 ẋg = Vx cos θ +Vz sin θ , Equation (7) is the same as the first equation in (2), there-



 fore, the longitudinal force increment ∆Fz can be derived.
ḣ = Vx sin θ −Vz cos θ , According to the second equation of (3), (6) and (7), the
where q is the pitch angular rate. Vx and Vz are the compo- lift increment ∆L is described as
nents of flight velocity along the body longitudinal axes. ( cos α )−1 [ F 0 ( )
]
θ is the pitch attitude angle. m is the mass of the aircraft. ∆L = z
− V̇z − qVx . (8)
Jy is the moment of inertia. xg and h are the north and m m
vertical components of the aircraft position in the locally Therefore, the actual longitudinal force increment ∆Fz
level geographic frame on the surface of the Earth. produced by the actuators deflections is
In (3), Fx and Fz are the components of the resultant
[ ]
force along the body longitudinal axes, which is composed ( ) Fz0
of the engine thrust, aerodynamic forces and gravity. And ∆Fz = m V̇z − qVx − , (9)
m
they are defined by
{ where V̇z is measured by the longitudinal acceleration sen-
Fx = P + L sin α − D cos α − mg sin θ ,
(4) sor.
Fz = −L cos α − D sin α + mg cos θ , In addition, according to (3), the actual pitching mo-
where α is the angle of attack. The engine thrust P = ment increment produced by the actuators deflections can
Kp δ p , and Kp is the thrust coefficient, δ p is the throttle be derived by
setting. D and L are the drag and lift, respectively. q̇ − fq
According to (4), the longitudinal force Fz will be ∆My = , (10)
Jy
changed when the lift L or drag D change. The lift L is
defined by where q̇ is measured by the angular acceleration sensor,
L = L0 + ∆L, (5) and fq is given by

where ∆L is the lift increment produced by the actuators fq = Jy My0 (11)

deflections, and L0 is determined by the aircraft configu-
ration and flight states. with
Submitting (5) into the second equation in (4), the lon- 1
gitudinal force Fz is My0 = ρ V 2 Sc̄(Cm,α =0 +Cmα α +Cmq̄ q̄ +Cmα̇¯ α̇¯ ),
2
Fz = −L0 cos α − D sin α + mg cos θ − ∆L cos α . (6) (12)
1358 Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li

where ρ is the air density, S is the wing reference area, V 2.3. Attitude controller design
is the flight velocity, c̄ is the wing mean geometric chord, In Fig. 1, the purpose of attitude controller design is
C(∗) is the aerodynamic derivatives. q̄ and α̇¯ are defined to derive the desired moment increments ∆M M d from the
by attitude command r a . Having separated the longitudinal
{
q̄ = qc̄/(2V ), attitude states into fast and slow dynamics, the feedback is
(13) used to provide the system with desirable dynamics. Then,
α̇¯ = α̇ c̄/(2V ).
the desired pitch angular rate dynamic is specified by
2.2. Trajectory controller design q̇d = ωq (qc − q), (21)
In Fig. 1, the purpose of trajectory controller design is
to derive the desired force increments ∆F F d from the trajec- where ωq is the design parameter. qc is the commanded
tory command r t . According to (6), the changes of longi- pitch angular rate given by the slow dynamic loop.
tudinal force Fz is mainly determined by the lift L. There- Replacing the q̇ in the left of (10) by the q̇d from (21),
fore, the trajectory command is altitude command hc , and the desired pitch moment increment is
the desired longitudinal force increment ∆Fzd is desired lift
increment ∆Ld . q̇d − fq
∆Mdy = . (22)
To simplify the expressions of aerodynamic forces, the Jy
longitudinal force equations are given in the wind axes
coordinates. In addition the desired pitch attitude dynamic is similar to
 (21)
 dV
m = P cos α − D − mg sin γ ,
dt (14) θ̇d = ωθ (θc − θ ), (23)
 mV d γ = P sin α + L − mg cos γ ,

dt where ωθ is the design parameter, and θc is the com-
where γ is the flight-path angle, and satisfies the following manded pitch attitude angle given by designer.
equation. Replacing the θ̇ in the fourth equation of (3) by the θ̇d
dh from (23), the commanded pitch angular rate is
= ḣ = V sin γ . (15)
dt
qc = θ̇d . (24)
The desired fight altitude dynamics is specified by
ḣd = kh (hc − h), (16) 2.4. Closed-loop force and moment dynamic control
allocation
where h is the actual altitude, and kh is the design param-
eter. The control allocation problem is to determine the actual
According to (15) and (16), the flight-path angle com- control vector u (t) ∈ R m according to the virtual control
mand γc is given by vector v (t) ∈ R l . Mathematically, given v (t), then the u (t)
is derived by
ḣd
γc = arcsin . (17)
V f (uu(t)) = v (t), (25)
Then the flight-path angle dynamics is defined as
where f : Rm 7→ Rl is the nonlinear mapping from u (t) to
γ̇d = kγ (γc − γ ), (18) v (t). The actuator dynamic can be defined as
where γ is the actual flight-path angle, which is computed
by γ = θ − α , and kγ is the design parameter. δ̇δ (t) = g (δ (t),uu(t)) , (26)
In (5), L0 determined by the aircraft configuration and
flight states is in the form of where δ (t) is the actuator deflection. In a digital flight
control system, u(t) subjects to the following constraints
1
L0 = ρ V 2 S(CL0 +CLα α +CLq̄ q̄), (19) [32]
2
where CL0 , CLα , and CLq̄ are the aerodynamic derivatives. u (t) ≤ u (t) ≤ ūu(t),
Submitting (5) and (19) into (14), the desired lift incre-
u (t) = max(δ min , (uu(t − T ) − δ̇δ max T )),
ment ∆Ld is
ūu(t) = min(δ max , (uu(t − T ) + δ̇δ max T )), (27)
∆Ld =mV γ̇d − P sin α + mg cos γ
1
− ρ V 2 S(CL0 +CLα α +CLq̄ q̄), (20) where δ min , δ max , and δ̇δ max are the lower and upper ac-
2 tuator position and rate constraints, respectively. T is the
where γ̇d is derived by (18). sample time.
 A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct Force Control 1359

The dynamic control allocation can be expressed as the Because the change of B r (k) is small during the sample
following sequential quadratic-programming problem if time T , the following equation is derived.
no actuators are saturated.
{ B r (k) = B r (k − 1). (37)
W 1 [uuv (t) −uus (t)]∥2
u v (t) = arg min ∥W
Ω
u v (t)∈Ω Next, substituting (33), (36) and (37) into ( 35), equa-
} tion (35) is changed to
W 2 [uuv (t) −uuv (t − T )]∥2
+ ∥W
∆Y
Y (k) = ∆Y
Y (k − 1) +V R(k) − ∆Y
V (k) [∆R Y (k)] , (38)
Ω= arg min ∥W Bu v (t) −vv(t))∥ ,
W Ω (B (28)
u (t)≤uuv (t)≤ūu(t) where
[ ]
where us (t) ∈ Rm is the desired steady-state control in- F )−1 E (B
V (k) = B r (k)(II −F Br (k))† +G
G , V ∈ R l×l .
put, and u v (t) ∈ R m is the dynamic control allocation out-
(39)
put; W 1 , W 2 and W Ω are the square matrices of proper
dimensions.
√ ∥∗∥ denotes the Euclidean norm defined by The z transform of (38) is
∥x∥ = xT x.
∆Y
Y (z) V (z)
zV
Lemma 1 [9]: The explicit solution to (28) is = . (40)
∆R
R(z) z(II +VV (z)) −II
F u v (k − 1) +G
u v (k) = E u s (k) +F Gv (k), (29)
3. STABILITY ANALYSIS
where
The stability for the closed-loop dynamic system is sig-
E = (II −G W −2W 21 , F = (II −G
GB )W W −2W 22 ,
GB )W nificantly important. In this part, the closed-loop dynamic
( )† √
G = W −1 BW −1 , W = W 21 +W W 22 , (30) control allocation system stability is analyzed when the
actuators are healthy and fail.
where I is the identity matrix, and the symbol † denotes
the pseudoinverse operator A † = A T (A AA T )−1 . 3.1. Stability without actuator failures
In the steady-state, the dynamic control allocation out- Lemma 3 [33]: Given A ∈ C n×n , and A is normal ma-
put u v (k) = u v (k − 1) and the desired steady-state control trix, there is a unitary matrix U ∈ U n×n , such that
input u s (k) = B †v (k), therefore, equation (29) reduces to U H AU = diag(λ1 , λ2 , · · · , λn ), (41)
[ ]
u v (k) = (II −FF )−1 E B †v (k) +G
Gv (k) . (31) where U HU = U U H = I , and λ1 , λ2 , ..., λn are the eigen-
Lemma 2: Let explicit solution to (28) is defined in values of A .
Lemma 1, then the input-output relation of the dash-dotted Theorem 1: Let the input-output relation of closed-
frame in Fig. 1 is described as loop dynamic control allocation be defined in Lemma 2,
and suppose the matrix V (k) in (39) is a real normal ma-
∆Y
Y (z) zVV (z) trix with eigenvalues λ1 , λ2 , ..., λn . The closed-loop force
= , (32)
∆R
R(z) z(II +V V (z)) −II and moment dynamic control allocation system described
by (40) is stable, if |1 + λi | > 1 is satisfied.
where ∆YY (z) = [∆FF (z), ∆MM (z)]T , ∆R M d (z)]T .
F d (z), ∆M
R(z) = [∆F Proof: According to (40), the closed-loop characteris-
Proof: The actual force and moment increments ∆Y Y (k) tic equation of the closed-loop allocation system in the z
can be derived by plane is
∆Y
Y (k) = B r (k)uu(k), (33) V (z)) −II = 0 .
z(II +V (42)
where B r (k) is the actual control effectiveness matrix, and Considering Lemma 3, the following equation is de-
u (k) is the input of actuator in Fig. 1. rived.

u (k) = u (k − 1) +uuv (k). (34) V (z) = U (diag(λ1 , λ2 , ..., λn ))U

UH, (43)

Substituting (31) and (34) into (33), ∆YY (k) is where U is unitary matrix.
[ ] Substituting (43) into (42), we obtain
∆YY (k) =B F )−1 E (B
Br (k)(II −F Br (k))† +G G v (k)  
λ1 0 · · · 0
Br (k)uu(k − 1),
+B (35)  0 λ2 · · · 0 
  H
UU H + zU
zU U . .. . . U −U
UU H = 0 .
 .. . . 0 
where the input of dynamic control allocation v (k) is
0 ··· 0 λn
v (k) = ∆R
R(k) − ∆Y
Y (k). (36) (44)
1360 Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li

Equation (44) can be simplified to V 0F (k) + ∆V

=V V F (k), (52)
 
z + zλ1 − 1 0 ··· 0 where the matrix V 0F (k) without actuator failure is
 0 z + zλ − 1 ··· 0 
 2  H [ ]
U .. .. U = 0 .
 . .
..
. 0  F )−1 E (B
V 0F (k) = Br (k)(II −F Br (k))† +G
G . (53)
0 ··· 0 z + zλn − 1
(45) The error matrix ∆V
V F (k) is
[ ]
Then the roots of characteristic equation are ∆V
V F (k) = B r (k) (Φ F )−1 E (B
ΦF −II ) (II −F Br (k))† +G
G .
1 (54)
zi = , i = 1, 2, · · · , n. (46)
1 + λi
Theorem 2: Suppose the matrix V 0F (k) in (53) and
And the system is stable if the closed-loop characteristic ∆VV F (k) in (53) are the commute matrixes with eigenval-
roots lie inside the unit circle, that is |zi | < 1. Therefore, ues λ1F0 , λ2F0 , ..., λnF0 and λ1F∆ , λ2F∆ , ..., λnF∆ , respectively. If
the following stable condition is derived. λiF0 + λiF∆ > 0 is satisfied, then the closed-loop force and
moment dynamic control allocation system is stable in the
|1 + λi | > 1. (47)
presence of the actuator failure.
This completes the proof. □ Proof: When the actuator failure happens, the matrix
∆VV F (k) will have some changes, therefore, it is difficult to
3.2. Stability with actuator failures make the matrix V F (k) be the normal matrix. Therefore,
The actuators of an aircraft may be affected by differ- the conclusion of the Theorem 1 cannot be used. Then
ent types of failures in the flight missions, and one of the equation (42) changes to
typical failures is the loss of effectiveness failure. In this
V F (z)) −II = 0.
z(II +V (55)
part, the stability of closed-loop force and moment dy-
namic control allocation in the presence of the actuator
Based on the stable theorem of the discrete-time sys-
loss of effectiveness failure will be studied.
tem, the closed-loop system is stable if all the eigenval-
The control signal δ (t) (input of the plant, output of the
ues are smaller than one. Obviously, if the eigenvalues of
actuator) can be derived by the following formula which
I +VV F (z) are bigger than one, that is to say, the eigen-
includes the actuator loss of effectiveness failure.
values of V F (z) are bigger than zero, then the closed-loop
δ (t) = Φ F u (t), (48) control allocation system is stable.
In addition, V 0F (k) and ∆V V F (k) are the commute ma-
where trixes, and the matrix V F (k) = V 0F (k) + ∆V V F (k) eigenval-
ues are λiF0 + λiF∆ , i = 1, 2, ..., n. Therefore, the following
Φ F = diag { f1 , · · · , fm } , fi ≤ 1. (49) stable condition is obtained.
Therefore, the actuator i has a loss of effectiveness fail- λiF0 + λiF∆ > 0, i = 1, 2, · · · , n. (56)
ure if 0 < fi < 1, f j = 1, j ̸= i.
According to (48), the actuators control effectiveness This completes the proof. □
will be changed when they are in the presence of actuator
failure. Considering (33) and (48), we obtain
4. SIMULATION RESULTS
∆Y ΦF u (k) = B F (k)uu(k),
Y (k) = B r (k)Φ (50)
4.1. Direct force control conception
where B F (k) is the control effectiveness matrix with actu- The direct force control in this paper is different from
ator failure. the reaction-jet control system for missiles [34, 35], and
According to (50), the actuator failure changes the con- the direct force control makes use of multiple aerody-
trol effectiveness matrix, and the control effectiveness ma- namic control actuators about a single axis to change the
trix B F (k) can be define as trimmed aerodynamic forces and moments independent of
the angle of attack and the sideslip angle. In Fig. 2, de-
B F (k) = B r (k) +B ΦF −II ) .
Br (k) (Φ (51) flections of the canard coordinated with deflections of the
elevator provide the direct control of normal acceleration
Replacing B r (k) in (39) with B F (k) in (51), we derive
to vary the flight altitude.
Br (k) +B
V F (k) = [B ΦF −II )]
Br (k) (Φ In this paper, the two main modes will be considered,
[ ] which are the pitch pointing mode and direct lift mode.
× (II −FF )−1 E (B Br (k))† +G
G In the pitch pointing mode, the fuselage pitch attitude θ
 A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct Force Control 1361

Fig. 2. The conception diagram of direct force control.

Fig. 5. CRW aircraft in the fixed wing mode.

models are described as

20 10
δc = uc , δe = ue , |δc | ≤ 15◦ , |δe | ≤ 25◦ ,
s + 20 s + 10
(57)
Fig. 3. Pitch pointing mode.
where s denotes differential operator, [uc , ue ] and [δc , δe ]
are the input and output of the longitudinal actuators, re-
spectively. The canard and elevator are the devices to pro-
duce the longitudinal direct force which can be used to
finish pitch pointing and direct lift. The constant matrix is
chosen by
[ ]
1 0
W 1 =W 2 = . (58)
0 0.1

The actual control effectiveness matrix B r without fail-

Fig. 4. Direct lift mode.
will be varied at a constant flight altitude. Canard deflec-
tion and coordinated elevator deflection are used to pro-
duce desired moment and minimize the change of normal
acceleration. Therefore, the feature of the pitch pointing
mode is quickly aiming at the target. This feature is shown
in Fig. 3.
In the direct lift mode, the normal acceleration will be
varied at a constant angle of attack. But the pitch attitude
θ holds constant when there is no wind. Canard deflection
and coordinated elevator deflection are used to produce
desired lift and minimize the change of moment. There-
fore, the feature of this mode is precision flight altitude
control. This feature is shown in Fig. 4.
4.2. Simulation condition
In the simulation, a Canard Rotor/Wing (CRW) aircraft
model [36] in the fixed-wing mode is used to verify the
direct force control method proposed in this paper. Fig. 5
shows the configuration of the CRW aircraft in the fixed-
wing mode [37].
According to Fig. 5, the longitudinal actuators of the
CRW aircraft are canard and elevator, and their dynamic
ures is
[ ]
0.061 0.0196
Br = . (59)
0.079 −0.0356
The actual control effectiveness matrix B r is obtained at
the trimmed flight condition 3000 m, 110 m/s. This matrix
will be changed when the actuator failure happens. How-
ever, the design matrix is B = B r whether the actuators are
healthy or fail. The parameters of trajectory controller are
kh = 0.4, kγ = 0.75, and the parameters of altitude con-
troller are ωθ = 5, ωq = 10.
In the following simulations, the initial altitude and ve-
locity are 3000m and 110m/s, and the initial attitude an-
gles and angular rates are zeros. In addition, the sample
time is T = 0.02 s.
4.3. Pitch pointing control without actuator failure
In the pitch pointing mode, the fuselage pitch attitude
will be varied at a constant flight altitude. The CRW air-
craft will track the pitch command and maintain the flight
altitude 3000 m using the direct force control method pro-
posed in this paper.
Considering (30), (39), (58) and (59), the V (k) in (39)
is
[ ]
1 0
V (k) = . (60)
0 1
1362 Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li
Fig. 6. Responses of attitude and trajectory in pitch point-
ing mode (no failures).
Fig. 7. Deflections of actuators in pitch pointing mode (no
failures).
It is easy to verify V (k)V V T (k) = V T (k)VV (k), there-
fore V (k) is a real normal matrix, and its eigenvalues are
λ1 = λ2 = 1. According to the Theorem 1, the designed
closed-loop force and moment dynamic control allocation
is stable. Figs. 6 and 7 show the attitude, trajectory and ac-
tuators deflections responses using the direct force method
and the method proposed in [26].
In Fig. 6, the pitch command can be tracked by the two
methods, and the pitch responses are similar. However,
the flight altitude has a large change using the method
proposed in [26], and the maximal error is about 166m.
Meanwhile, the direct force control method tracks the
pitch command and maintains the flight altitude. When
the CRW aircraft tracks the pitch command, the an-
gle of attack will increase. This leads to the aerody-
namic force to make the altitude of aircraft increase. In
Fig. 8. Responses of attitude and trajectory in direct lift
mode (no failures).
Fig. 7, during tracking the pitch command, the direct force
method makes the canard and elevator have the upward
synchronous deflections to produce the downward force.
Then the longitudinal force acting on the CRW aircraft is
trimmed, and the flight altitude is maintained. Therefore,
the direct force control method proposed in this paper re-
alizes the pitch pointing mode, while the method in [26]
does not realize this mode.
4.4. Direct lift control without actuator failure
In the direct lift mode, the flight altitude will be varied
at a constant fuselage pitch attitude. The CRW aircraft
will increase the flight altitude from 3000 m to 3050 m,
and maintain the pitch angle 5◦ using the direct force con-
trol method proposed in this paper. In the conventional
flight altitude control, the pitch angle control loop is the
inner loop of altitude control. In other words, the altitude
controller produces the pitch command, and the pitch con-
troller tracks this command.
In the following simulation, the pitch controller of the
conventional flight altitude control method uses the con-
trol allocation method in [26], and the trajectory controller
uses PID control method.Figs. 8 and 9 show the attitude,
trajectory and actuators deflections responses using the di-
rect force and conventional altitude control method.
In Fig. 8, the two methods all change the flight altitude
from 3000 m to 3050 m, but the process is different. In
the conventional control method, the pitch angle firstly in-
creases to 20◦ , next the flight altitude gradually increases
to 3050 m. That is to say the pitch angle and flight alti-
tude are coupled. When the direct force control method
is used, the aircraft increases the flight altitude and main-
tains the pitch angle 5◦ . Comparing with the conventional
method, the proposed method can decouple the pitch an-
gle and flight altitude, and improve the flight performance.
 A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct Force Control 1363

Fig. 9. Deflections of actuators in direct lift mode (no fail- Fig. 10. Responses of attitude and trajectory in pitch
ures). pointing mode (failure).

This is because the direct force control method makes ca-

nard and elevator have the downward synchronous deflec-
tions to produce the upward force and maintains the lon-
gitudinal moment is zero.

4.5. Pitch pointing control with actuator failure

To further prove the effectiveness of our proposed
method, the actuator loss of effectiveness failure is con-
sidered. However, there is no a fault detection subsystem
to identify the actuator failure in this paper.
In the simulation, the elevator has the loss of effective-
ness failure, while the canard is healthy. The elevator
maintains only 50% of its effectiveness after 20 seconds,
and the following formula is derived according to (48).
[ ] [ ][ ] Fig. 11. Deflections of actuators in pitch pointing mode
δc 1 0 uc
= , t ≥ 20 s. (61) (failure).
δe 0 0.5 ue

The direct force control method using open-loop force

loss of effectiveness failure.
and moment control allocation is named as Method I,
Submitting (30) , (58) , (59) and (61) into (53) and (54),
while the one using closed-loop force and moment control
respectively, the following formula is derived.
allocation is names as Method II. The two methods will
[ ]
be used in pitch pointing control with the fore-mentioned F )−1 E (B
V 0F (k) = B r (k)(II −F Br (k))† +GG
failure. Figs. 10 and 11 show the attitude, trajectory and [ ]
actuators deflections responses using the two methods. 1 0
= , (62)
Figs. 10 and 11 show that the Method I does not ex- 0 1
[ ]
actly distribute the desired longitudinal force and moment
∆V
V F (k) = B r (k) (Φ F )−1 E (B
ΦF −II ) (II −F Br (k))† +GG
between canard and elevator after the loss of effective- [ ]
ness failure happens. However, the Method II tracks the −0.2081 0.1607
= . (63)
pitch command and maintains the flight altitude with lit- 0.3780 −0.2919
tle degradation. This is because there is a feedback from
force & moment increment in the proposed approach, and According to (62) and (63), we obtain
the error between the desired force & moment and actual V F (k) = ∆V
V 0F (k)∆V V 0F (k).
V F (k)V (64)
force & moment can be enforced to zero. Therefore, the
proposed method (Method II) has better fault-tolerant con- So V 0F (k) and ∆V
V F (k) are the commute matrixes. In
trol performance than Method I when the actuator has the addition, the eigenvalues of V 0F (k) are λ1F0 = 1 and λ2F0 =
1364 Wendong Gai, Jie Liu, Jing Zhang, and Yuxia Li
Fig. 12. Responses of attitude and trajectory in direct lift
mode (failure).
V F (k) are λ1F∆ = 0 and λ2F∆ =
1, while the eigenvalues of ∆V
−0.5. Then the following equation is derived.
{
λ1F0 + λ1F∆ = 1 > 0,
λ2F0 + λ2F∆ = 0.5 > 0.
According to Theorem 2, the designed closed-loop force
and moment dynamic control allocation in the actuator
failure is also stable.
4.6. Direct lift control with actuator failure
In the direct lift mode, the initial simulation condition
is same as Section 4.5. However, the elevator maintains
only 50% of its effectiveness after 8s, while the canard is
healthy. Then the following formula is derived according
to (48).
[ ] [ ][ ] trol modes with acceptable performance when the eleva-
δc 1 0 uc
= , t ≥ 8 s.
δe 0 0.5 ue
Method I and Method II will be used in direct lift con-
trol with the loss of effectiveness failure.
Figs. 12 and 13 show that the Method II still makes
the aircraft increase the flight altitude and maintain the
pitch angle 5◦ , after the loss of effectiveness failure hap-
pens. During increasing the aircraft altitude, the mag-
nitudes of canard and elevator deflections are larger and
the responses are faster in the method II. Furthermore, the
pitch angle and flight altitude are also successfully decou-
pled in this situation. However, the Method I loses the
similar tracking performance, and the changes of canard
and elevator deflections are smaller in this situation when
the loss of effectiveness failure happens. Therefore, the
better fault-tolerant control performance is derived by the
proposed method in direct lift mode.
Fig. 13. Deflections of actuators in direct lift mode (fail-
ure).
5. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new closed-loop control allocation
method is proposed for distributing the force and mo-
(65) ment increment commands among multiple actuators at
the same time. Specially, both trajectory and attitude con-
trollers based on nonlinear dynamic inversion are used
to derive the desired force and moment increments com-
mand. Then, the closed-loop control allocation method
is presented, and the stability of the closed-loop system
has been proved in the absence or presence actuator fail-
ure. Finally, the proposed method is used to achieve
pitch pointing and direct lift control mode. Series of
comparative simulation results in the CRW aircraft lon-
gitudinal nonlinear model were given to show the effec-
tiveness of the proposed approach in solving the attitude
and trajectory decoupling problem. In addition, the pro-
posed method is able to achieve the two direct force con-
(66) tor maintains only 50% of its effectiveness. However, the
proposed method did not consider the aircraft latitudinal
flight control. Future work should be extended to solve
this problem.
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Wendong Gai received the Ph.D. degree
in Navigation, Guidance and Control from
Beihang University, China, in 2013. He
joined the College of Electrical Engineer-
ing and Automation, Shandong Univer-
sity of Science and Technology, Qingdao,
China, in 2013. His research interests in-
clude modeling and nonlinear flight con-
trol of unmanned aerial vehicle, fault tol-
erant control, sense and avoid in multiple UAVs.
Jie Liu received the B.Eng. degree in
Automation from Shandong University of
Science and Technology, China, in 2015.
She is currently a M.Eng. candidate in
Control Engineer, Shandong University
of Science and Technology. Her research
interests include nonlinear flight control,
system identification and adaptive con-
trol.
Jing Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in
Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Sys-
tem from South China University of Tech-
nology, China, in 2011. She joined the
College of Electrical Engineering and Au-
tomation, Shandong University of Science
and Technology, Qingdao, China, in 2011.
Her research interests include intelligent
control theory, image process and pattern
recognition, and the application of advanced control and opti-
mization technique to robots.
Yuxia Li received the B.S. degree from
Shenyang Jianzhu University, China, in
1990, and the Ph.D. degree from Guang-
dong University of Technology, China, in
2005. She has been a Professor at the
College of Electrical Engineering and Au-
tomation, Shandong University of Science
and Technology, Qingdao, China, since
2008. Her current research interest cov-
ers memristor-based circuits and systems, nonlinear circuits and
systems, intelligent robot.