A modeling and probabilistic reasoning method of dynamic uncertain causality graph for industrial fault diagnosis

Abstract

Online automatic fault diagnosis in industrial systems is essential for guaranteeing safe, reliable and efficient operations. However, difficulties associated with computational overload, ubiquitous uncertainties and insufficient fault samples hamper the engineering application of intelligent fault diagnosis technology. Geared towards the settlement of these problems, this paper introduces the method of dynamic uncertain causality graph, which is a new attempt to model complex behaviors of real-world systems under uncertainties. The visual representation to causality pathways and self-relied "chaining" inference mechanisms are analyzed. In particular, some solutions are investigated for the diagnostic reasoning algorithm to aim at reducing its computational complexity and improving the robustness to potential losses and imprecisions in observations. To evaluate the effectiveness and performance of this method, experiments are conducted using both synthetic calculation cases and generator faults of a nuclear power plant. The results manifest the high diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, suggesting its practical significance in large-scale industrial applications. © 2014 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.