Automated Design of Grey-Box Recurrent Neural Networks for Fault Diagnosis using Structural Models and Causal Information

Behavioral modeling of nonlinear dynamic systems for control design and system monitoring of technical systems is a non-trivial task. One example is fault diagnosis where the objective is to detect abnormal system behavior due to faults at an early stage and isolate the faulty component. Developing sufficiently accurate models for fault diagnosis applications can be a time-consuming process which has motivated the use of data-driven models and machine learning. However, data-driven fault diagnosis is complicated by the facts that faults are rare events, and that it is not always possible to collect data that is representative of all operating conditions and faulty behavior. One solution to incomplete training data is to take into consideration physical insights when designing the data-driven models. One such approach is grey-box recurrent neural networks where physical insights about the monitored system are incorporated into the neural network structure. In this work, an automated design methodology is developed for grey-box recurrent neural networks using a structural representation of the system. Data from an internal combustion engine test bench is used to illustrate the potentials of the proposed network design method to construct residual generators for fault detection and isolation.