Development of Input Training Neural Networks for Multiple Sensor Fault Isolation

This paper considers the problem of inhibiting smearing effects for multiple sensor fault isolation. Although the reconstruction-based approach has received considerable attention and achieved excellent results, the investigation into nonlinear systems has been relatively limited. A new reconstruction-based input training neural network aided by the bound and branch method (BAB-RBITNN) is proposed for the nonlinear systems so as to achieve the desired performance of multiple sensor fault isolation. In BAB-RBITNN, a hypothetical faulty direction is naturally integrated into the objective testing function as residual weights for reducing the negative impacts of inaccurate sensor data, taking advantage of the non-static ITNN testing process. The weighted objective function is then considered as the fitness function to obtain the minimum predicted residual by the covariance matrix adaptation evolutionary strategy algorithm. The corresponding optimized fitness is regarded as the reconstruction-based index, which is the critical indicator of fault isolation in the proposed method. Besides, the BAB method is implemented to handle the combinatorial optimization problem instead of a brute search for intelligently pinpointing the real faulty sensors. The efficiency of the proposed method is shown through a validation example and two industrial examples. Comparisons with other methods, including reconstruction-based principal component analysis and reconstruction-based auto-associative neural network techniques, are also presented.