Fault isolation in distributed parameter systems modeled by parabolic partial differential equations

A fault detection and isolation scheme is addressed for a class of linear distributed parameter systems (DPS) described by partial differential equations (PDE). In contrast to using ordinary differential equations (ODE) for describing DPS, in this paper, a filter based observer based on the linear PDE representation is proposed with an output measurement. A fault is declared active when the magnitude of the detection residual exceeds a predefined threshold. Upon detection, an actuator and a sensor fault isolation estimators are activated to identify the fault type when their isolation residual is below a predefined threshold and the other is above the threshold. When both actuator and sensor fault isolation estimator residuals are above their isolation thresholds, a state fault is considered to have occurred. Upon isolation, the magnitude of the fault parameter is identified. Finally, the performance of the fault detection and isolation scheme is demonstrated on a heat reactor system which is represented by linear parabolic PDEs.