Model-Based Prognosis for Hybrid Systems With Mode-Dependent Degradation Behaviors

Prognosis of hybrid systems is a challenging problem because multiple faults may happen simultaneously at a mode where these faults have different detectabilities. In other words, at the fault-initiating mode, some of the faults are detectable while others are nondetectable. As a result, decision making based on only one observation of abnormal behavior is not reliable under this condition. This paper focuses on the development of a model-based prognosis framework for hybrid systems where a dynamic fault isolation scheme is proposed to facilitate the prognostic tasks. The degradation behavior of each faulty component is mode dependent and can be estimated by a hybrid differential evolution algorithm. Thereafter, the remaining useful life of the faulty component that varies with different operating modes is calculated by using both the estimated degradation model and the user-selected failure threshold. Experiments are carried out to validate the key concepts of the developed methods, and results suggest the effectiveness.