Detecting scalar intermittent faults in linear stochastic dynamic systems

Abstract

Intermittent faults (IFs) have properties such as intermittency, random magnitude and random duration time. Hence the detection of IFs means: (i) to detect not only all the appearing time but also all the disappearing time of IFs and (ii) to detect the appearing time of an IF before this IF disappears, and the disappearing time of an IF before the subsequent IF appears. Within a statistical framework, the detection of scalar IFs in continuous linear stochastic dynamic systems has been mainly studied. Based on the sliding window, an analytical residual is generated, and two hypothesis tests are implemented to detect the appearing and disappearing times of IFs. In addition, a necessary and sufficient condition for the detectability of IFs is obtained, and the detection speed can be fast enough. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations fully verify that IFs can be successfully detected.

Keywords:

• fault detection
• intermittent faults
• detectability
• hypothesis test

Acknowledgements

The work was supported in part by the National 973 Programme (2010CB731800, 2009cb320602), and NSFC (61210012, 61021063, 61290324, 61203230).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maoyin Chen

Maoyin Chen was born in China in 1975. He received the BS degree in mathematics and the MS degree in control theory and control engineering from Qufu Normal University, Shandong, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and the PhD degree in control theory and control engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, in 2003. From 2003 to 2005, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. From October 2005 to October 2008, he was an assistant researcher in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University. Since October 2008, he has been an associate professor in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University. His research interest is in the area of reliability analysis, fault prognosis and predictive maintenance.

Guibin Xu

Guibin Xu was born in China in 1983. He received his BE degree from the School of Astronautics from Harbin Institute of Technology, Heilongjiang, China, in 2006 and the ME degree from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2010.

Rongyi Yan

Rongyi Yan was born in China in 1987. He received his BE degree in control theory and control engineering from Shandong University, Shandong, China, in 2010. He is now a PhD candidate in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include intermittent fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control for closed systems and multi-agent systems.

Steven X. Ding

Steven X. Ding received his PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Gerhard-Mercator University of Duisburg, Germany, in 1992. From 1992 to 1994, he was an R&D engineer at Rheinmetall GmbH. From 1995 to 2001, he was a professor of control engineering at the University of Applied Science Lausitz in Senftenberg, Germany, and served as vice-president of this university between 1998 and 2000. He is currently a professor of control engineering and the head of the Institute for Automatic Control and Complex Systems (AKS) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. His research interests are model-based fault diagnosis, fault tolerant systems and their application in industry with a focus on automotive systems and chemical processes.

Donghua Zhou

Donghua Zhou was born in China in 1963. He received the BEng, MSc and PhD degrees all from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, in 1985, 1988 and 1990, respectively. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow (1995–1996) in the University of Duisburg, Germany, and a visiting professor at Yale University (July 2001–January 2002). Dr Zhou is currently a professor in the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University. Dr Zhou publishes widely with over 150 journal publications, and three monographs in the areas of process identification, diagnosis and control. He serves the profession in many capacities such as in the IFAC Technical Committee on Fault Diagnosis and Safety, as the deputy general secretary of Chinese Association of Automation (CAA), and as a council member of CAA. He was also the NOC Chair of the sixth IFAC Symposium on SAFEPROCESS, 2006. He is a senior member of the IEEE.