Distributed Diagnosis of Actuator and Sensor Faults in HVAC Systems

Journal article (2017)

Authors

Panayiotis Papadopoulos University of Cyprus
V. Reppa KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence and the, University of Cyprus
Marios M. Polycarpou University of Cyprus
Christos G. Panayiotou University of Cyprus
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Published Date

2017

Language

English

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Abstract

This paper presents a model-based methodology for diagnosing actuator and sensor faults affecting the temperature dynamics of a multi-zone heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system. By considering the temperature dynamics of the HVAC system as a network of interconnected subsystems, a distributed fault diagnosis architecture is proposed. For every subsystem, we design a monitoring agent that combines local and transmitted information from its neighboring agents in order to provide a decision on the type, number and location of the faults. The diagnosis process of each agent is realized in three steps. Firstly, the agent performs fault detection using a distributed nonlinear estimator. After the detection, the local fault identification is activated to infer the type of the fault using two distributed adaptive estimation schemes and a combinatorial decision logic. In order to distinguish between multiple local faults and propagated sensor faults, a distributed fault isolation is applied using the decisions of the neighboring agents. Simulation results of a 5-zone HVAC system are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.