Balancing filters: An approach to improve model-based fault diagnosis based on parity equations

Model-based fault detection often deals with the problem that fault states cannot be distinguished clearly. One way to improve the results is the use of balancing filters. The purpose of these filters is to balance the magnitude response over its full frequency range, since fault states show deviations from the nominal behavior at different frequencies and therefore at diverse magnitude levels. Their application aims on increasing the magnitude response levels in frequency ranges where it is low and to decrease it where the magnitude is on a higher level. Hence, the influence of the deviations caused by the fault states is weighted equally at all examined frequencies. The compensation of the system's basic characteristics leads to a stronger influence of the fault-caused deviations. Since these are useable features for fault identification, balancing filters lead to a better distinction between the states and faults. To apply such filters on real systems they must be designed and adapted to the particular system. This paper describes the idea of balancing filters for a diagnosis concept based on feature extraction by means of parity equations and shows several methods to design these filters. The first design method is based on placing poles and zeros heuristically to model the global characteristics of the frequency response and inverting this model to get a balancing filter. In contrast to this, the second approach uses measured data by inverting an experimentally identified model of the process. For the third method simple Butterworth filter elements are used to build up an inverted model of the global frequency behavior of the system directly. Since an adaptation of the filters to the investigated system is required experimental results show the improvements induced by these filters. The filters' effects are investigated on a test rig of a centrifugal pump with magnetic bearings. A second system that shows a more complex transfer behavior is used for the evaluation of the repeatability of the resulting improvements. Finally the idea of balancing filters, the presented design methods and the achieved experimental results are discussed in details. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.