A Maintenance and Troubleshooting Method Based on Integrated Information and System Principles

Newly developed equipment is occasionally disturbed by unknown faults during operation; however, it is difficult to diagnose unknown faults based on existing fault diagnostic models or knowledge. In addition, it is time-consuming to frequently and interactively check information related to a certain fault from numerous manuals. To address the maintenance and troubleshooting of faults, this paper develops an innovative method based on integrated information and system principles. Multi-source, distributed, and heterogeneous information integration methods based on ontology and ant colony are presented, and an information integration model based on system principles and graph theory is established. A theoretical system based on the information integration model is then designed and developed. To verify the effectiveness and the feasibility of the above methods and applications, the developed methods are applied to an air source system. The results show that the developed theories support the fault diagnosis of newly developed equipment and advance the efficiency of maintenance and troubleshooting.