An Interval Type-3 Fuzzy–Fractal Approach for Plant Monitoring

Abstract

In this article, a plant monitoring approach based on a hybrid mixture of type-3 fuzzy logic (T3FL) and the fractal dimension (FD) is presented. The main reason for combining type-3 and the fractal dimension is to take advantage of both their capabilities in solving the problem of monitoring a plant. Basically, T3FL helps in handling the uncertainty in monitoring the variables of a nonlinear system, while the FD helps to capture the signal complexity by finding key or hidden patterns in the data. The FD is utilized to estimate data complexity of the process variables being monitored. We utilize the box counting algorithm to approximate the values of the FD. A set of T3FL rules is utilized to model monitoring knowledge. The proposed approach was tested with a plant studied in previous works, which was solved with type-1 and type-2 fuzzy logic, and now type-3 is able to surpass the performance of previous approaches for this problem. The main contribution is the T3FL and FD hybrid proposal for plant monitoring, which has not been presented before in the literature. Simulation results illustrate the potential advantage of utilizing the T3FL and FD combination in this area.