An Integrated Environment for Machine System Simulation, Remote Monitoring and Fault Detection

Machine service and maintenance is an intricate specialist task and machine builders often have to provide worldwide service at short notice. Machine builders would benefit enormously from the possibility to monitor and diagnose equipment operating at distant locations – both for condition-based preventive maintenance and for diagnostic purposes before flying in qualified maintenance personnel and spare parts. This paper introduces an innovative virtual engineering framework that extends the kinematics modelling and dynamics modelling capability of advanced machine simulation systems to incorporate remote monitoring and fault detection features. Specifically, it addresses the software environment that is designed to facilitate the tight integration between virtual engineering tools (machine system simulation), machine controllers (real/simulated) and model-based fault detection schemes. The underlying real-time communication framework based on the publish-subscribe model and applications interfacing techniques