Diagnositic Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Based on Fuzzy Fault Petri Nets

The core of fault diagnosis expert system is diagnostic knowledge representation and reasoning. Fuzzy Petri nets (FPN) have been testified to an ideal tool for knowledge representation and reasoning. However, when using FPN for diagnostic knowledge representation and reasoning, fault symptoms will disappear after fault propagated. This is not congruous with factual fault propagation. Another major limitation is the lacking of formal reasoning algorithm of FPN, which leads to it can't be implemented expediently by computer. In view of the limitations of FPN based diagnostic knowledge representation and reasoning, an enhanced model named fuzzy fault Petri nets (FFPN) and its formal reasoning algorithm are presented in the paper. A fault diagnosis instance was used to verify the feasibility and validity of the proposed method. It is demonstrated that this method is quite effective.