Intelligent Process Fault Diagnosis for Nonlinear Systems with Uncertain Plant Model via Extended State Observer and Soft Computing

There have been many studies on observer-based fault detection and isolation (FDI), such as using unknown input observer and generalized observer. Most of them require a nominal mathematical model of the system. Unlike sensor faults, actuator faults and process faults greatly affect the system dynamics. This paper presents a new process fault diagnosis technique without exact knowledge of the plant model via Extended State Observer (ESO) and soft computing. The ESO’s augmented or extended state is used to compute the system dynamics in real time, thereby provides foundation for real-time process fault detection. Based on the input and output data, the ESO identifies the un-modeled or incorrectly modeled dynamics combined with unknown external disturbances in real time and provides vital information for detecting faults with only partial information of the plant, which cannot be easily accomplished with any existing methods. Another advantage of the ESO is its simplicity in tuning only a single parameter. Without the knowledge of the exact plant model, fuzzy inference was developed to isolate faults. A strongly coupled three-tank nonlinear dynamic system was chosen as a case study. In a typical dynamic system, a process fault such as pipe blockage is likely incipient, which requires degree of fault identification at all time. Neural networks were trained to identify faults and also instantly determine degree of fault. The simulation results indicate that the proposed FDI technique effectively detected and isolated faults and also accurately determine the degree of fault. Soft computing (i.e. fuzzy logic and neural networks) makes fault diagnosis intelligent and fast because it provides intuitive logic to the system and real-time input-output mapping.