In this paper, a novel adaptive fault tolerant controller design is proposed for a class of nonlinear unknown systems with multiple actuators. The controller consists of an adaptive learning-based control law, a Nussbaum gain, and a switching function scheme. The adaptive control law is implemented by a two-layer neural network to accommodate the unknown system dynamics. Without the requirement of additional fault detection mechanism, the switching function is designed to automatically locate and turn off the unknown faulty actuators by observing a control performance index. The asymptotic stability of the system output in the presence of actuator failures is rigidly proved through standard Lyapunov approach, while the other signals of the closed-loop system are guaranteed to be bounded. The theoretical result is substantiated by simulation on a two-tank system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved,