Probability based vehicle fault diagnosis: Bayesian network method

Abstract

Fault diagnostics are increasingly important for ensuring vehicle safety and reliability. One of the issues in vehicle fault diagnosis is the difficulty of successful interpretation of failure symptoms to correctly diagnose the real root cause. This paper presents an innovative Bayesian Network based method for guiding off-line vehicle fault diagnosis. By using a vehicle infotainment system as a case study, a number of Bayesian diagnostic models have been established for fault cases with single and multiple symptoms. Particular considerations are given to the design of the Bayesian model structure, determination of prior probabilities of root causes, and diagnostic procedure. In order to unburden the computation, an object oriented model structure has been adopted to prevent the model from overly large. It is shown that the proposed method is capable of guiding vehicle diagnostics in a probabilistic manner. Furthermore, the method features a multiple-symptoms-orientated troubleshooting strategy, and is capable of diagnosing multiple symptoms optimally and simultaneously.