Incipient Sensor Fault Diagnosis Using Moving Window Reconstruction-Based Contribution

Reconstruction-based contribution (RBC) is widely used for fault isolation and estimation in conjunction with principal component analysis (PCA)-based fault detection. Correct isolation can be guaranteed by RBC for single-sensor faults with large magnitudes. However, the incipient sensor fault diagnosis problem is not well handled by traditional PCA and RBC methods. In this paper, the limitations of traditional PCA and RBC methods for incipient sensor fault diagnosis are illustrated and analyzed. Through the introduction of a moving window, a new strategy based on the PCA model is presented for incipient fault detection. Regarding incipient fault isolation and estimation, a new contribution analysis method called moving window RBC is proposed to enhance the isolation performance and estimation accuracy. Rigorous fault detectability and isolability analyses of the proposed methods are provided. In addition, effects of the window width on fault detection, isolation, and estimation are discussed. Simulation studies on a numerical example and a continuous stirred tank reactor process are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.