Soft Faults Research Articles

Effects of simultaneous soft faults in a reversible and variable-speed air-to-water heat pump

The widespread adoption of air-to-water heat pumps is driven by their high heating efficiency, with some systems offering reversibility for cooling applications. Despite their benefits, these systems are susceptible to soft faults such as undercharge, overcharge, and outdoor unit airflow restrictions (condenser fouling in cooling mode or evaporator fouling in heating mode). Detecting and addressing these faults before they escalate into hard faults is critical. While previous experimental studies have focused on residential heat pumps with imposed faults, most were conducted on air-to-air systems, primarily in cooling mode and with fixed-speed compressors. This study addresses the gap by investigating a reversible air-to-water heat pump employing R290 and a variable-speed compressor. The experimental work consists of imposing faults of undercharge, overcharge, condenser and evaporator fouling, individually and in combination. The investigation analysis considers the system’s behavior under these faults in cooling and heating modes and how the control strategy (subcooling or superheat) and a compressor suction accumulator affect it. In cooling mode, the combination of 85% undercharge and 50% condenser fouling worsens the EER up to 39% if the superheat is controlled and up to 10% if the subcooling is controlled. In heating mode with subcooling control, 85% undercharge combined with a 50% evaporator fouling can worsen the COP by 32%. However, there are cases where those same fault levels only impact the COP by 4% due to the charge requirements of the condition and that the excess charge is stored in the compressor suction accumulator. As compressor speed can significantly affect the refrigerant charge requirements of the system, this work shows its potential for fault detection, particularly for undercharge. These findings can provide a basis for developing Fault Detection and Diagnosis methodologies for reversible air-to-water heat pumps with variable-speed compressors.

An Efficient Double Deep Q Learning Network-Based Soft Faults Detection and Localization in Analog Circuits

To identify whether the circuit under test is fault-free or faulty, fault diagnosis is conducted in an analog circuit. However, in the case of fault detection (FD) techniques, the size of FD is the main challenge in testing, especially for complex analog circuits. Hence to reduce the size of FD, specific test nodes are chosen to perform fault diagnosis from the available accessible test nodes. Specific test nodes are selected based on the faults classification efficiency of fault diagnosis. Therefore, this paper proposes an approach for single and multiple soft fault diagnosis using minimum test nodes in analog electronic circuits. The proposed double deep Q-learning-based hybrid Simulated annealing–Tabu search (DDQN-Hybrid SATS) technique determines minimum test nodes with the utilization of distance metric for fault classification. The DDQN-Hybrid SATS technique is used to identify minimum nodes for testing. In this, the double deep Q learning network (DDQN) ensures better reliability and faster convergence in learning but suffers from catastrophic forgetting issues. To prevent such issues, the DDQN approach is optimized using a hybrid SATS algorithm. The hybrid optimization of simulated annealing (SA) and Tabu search (TS) coalesce the advantages of individual optimization procedures to provide the optimum solution in a fast and effective way. The results for a fourth-order low pass filter are presented (i.e., first CUT) and an eight-bit digital to analog converter (i.e., second CUT). Moreover, the simulation experiment reveals that the proposed DDQN-Hybrid SATS technique achieves greater overall fault classification accuracy of about 96.25% than other compared techniques with minimum computation time.

A Fault Diagnosis Method for Analog Circuits Based on Improved TQWT and Inception Model

A soft fault in an analog circuit is a symptom where the parameter range of a component exists symmetrically to the left and right of its nominal value and exceeds a specific range. The proposed method uses the Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) optimized tunable Q-factor wavelet transform (TQWT) algorithm for feature refinement, the Inception model for feature extraction, and an SVM for fault diagnosis. First, the Q-factor is optimized to make it more compatible with the signal. Second, the signal is decomposed, and a single-branch reconstruction is performed using the TQWT to extract features adequately. Then, fault feature extraction is conducted using the Inception model to obtain multiscale features. Finally, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to complete the entire fault diagnosis process. The proposed method is comprehensively evaluated using the Sallen–Key bandpass filter circuit and the four-op-amp biquad high-pass filter circuit widely used in electronic systems. The experimental results prove that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods in terms of diagnosis accuracy and reliability.

Adaptive fault detection for lithium-ion battery combining physical model-based observer and BiLSTMNN learning approach

Lithium-ion batteries possess one of the best energy-weight ratios, while safety and reliability are critical issues for its continued operation. Due to extreme fast-charging, huge application sizes and variable usage environment, the risk of soft battery faults, including soft internal short circuit (SISC), is increased and may evolve into severe accidents. Therefore, accurate early detection of lithium-ion battery fault is imperative to guarantee the battery performance. Motivated by this fact, we proposed a real time fault detection framework for battery soft faults. Based on the Equivalent Circuit Model (ECM) and coupling thermal model, Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) observer is used for reliable monitoring of battery voltage and surface temperature. Inspired by uncertainty interference during the observation process, we explore an observed-based learning approach that combine physical model-based observer and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory neural networks (BiLSTMNN) to empower the observer with the ability to learn the uncertainties, which is efficient in distinguishing soft faults information and uncertainties from residual. Furthermore, the memory characteristics of BiLSTMNN are considered to improve the robustness of the detection system, including comprehensive training data and optimized input features. Finally, through the comparative analysis and the robustness evaluation experiments including various driving cycles and internal short circuits (ISC) faults test verity the good performance of the proposed method.

Convolutional preprocessing Transformer-based fault diagnosis for rectifier-filter circuits in nuclear power plants

Rectifier-filter circuit, as a vital electronic component in nuclear power plants (NPPs), serves the role of converting alternating current into smooth direct current. Affected by intense radiation environmental factors and variable operating profiles, the rectifier-filter circuit is subject to degradation and soft failures, namely, a derated circuit performance but not yet to failure. It is urgent to diagnose the soft failures of the rectifier-filter circuit, so as to ensure the safe operations of NPPs. In this article, an ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) algorithm is first employed to decompose the three-phase current signals and electrical signals of electronic components. The decomposed signals are fed into a convolutional preprocessing Transformer (CPT) to deeply extract the fault features of the rectifier-filter circuit. Specifically, the multi-directional, multi-scale, and extremely sensitive long-range time-dependent features in the EEMD feature data are extracted by the multi-head attention mechanism of the Transformer. A deep Softmax classifier is, then, devised to reduce the feature dimensionality and identify the soft fault modes of the rectifier-filter circuit. The fault simulation of the rectifier-filter circuit is conducted, and a real case experiment and multiple comparative studies are conducted to validate the effectiveness and diagnosis accuracy of the CPT-based method.

Fault Identification in Optical Transport Network Using CNN

The growing diversity Regarding the provision of information and services transmitted Using optical technology transport networks (OTN) has made network survival a crucial issue in current study. Fault detection refers to the process of identifying faults that arise from various issues such as packet loss, disconnection, and others in the OTN. The determination of the fault location in an OTN is highly significant in the analysis of the resilience of optical networks. This study presents a fault diagnosis system that utilises a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), focusing primarily on distinguishing between hard faults (HF) and soft faults (SF). The CNN is implemented in where the fault is situated domain of OTN to determine the presence or absence of potential fault locations. The notion An F-Measure is implemented in order to quantify the impact of positioning.utilising Location, time, mean squared error (MSE), and F-measure. The scientific investigation demonstrates that the suggested CNN neural network achieves the highest performance. The suggested CNN has a reduced localization time and achieves an F1-score of 0.98 after 85 iterations. This level of accuracy and real-time performance fulfils the requirements for fault identification. Hence, there is significant potential and practical utility in incorporating neural networks in the field of identifying and locating faults in optical transport networks.

A Fault Diagnosis Method for Rectifier-Filter Circuit Integrating EEMD Algorithm and Transformer Network

Rectifier-filter circuit, as a critical component of the drive circuit in instrumentation and control systems of nuclear power plants, can convert the 50 Hz AC into the smooth DC. Thus, it plays a vital role in the power control of reactors. However, the weak waveform anomalies of soft faults in the rectifier-filter circuit make fault feature extraction difficult. Therefore, in this article, an ensemble empirical modal decomposition (EEMD) algorithm is employed to decompose the signal mode components in the monitor data of the rectifier-filter circuit. The weak waveform anomalies are indirectly enhanced by the IMF and residual components. Subsequently, the Transformer network is utilized to construct the feature extractor. With the advantage of multi-head attention (MHA) mechanism in the Transformer network, the multi-directional, multi-scale, and highly sensitive long-range time-dependent features in the EEMD feature data are extracted. Then, a deep Softmax classifier is adopted to reduce the dimensionality and diagnose the soft faults of the rectifier-filter circuit. Finally, a fault simulation model of the rectifier-filter circuit is constructed and the condition monitor data are collected. The effectiveness and diagnosis accuracy of the proposed method are verified by a real case experiment and some comparative methods.

An analog circuit fault diagnosis method using improved sparrow search algorithm and support vector machine.

In analog circuits, component tolerances and circuit nonlinearity pose obstacles to fault diagnosis. To solve this problem, a soft fault diagnosis method based on Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used. In this study, ISSA is obtained by optimization using four strategies for SSA deficiency. Twenty-three benchmark functions are used for optimization experiments, and ISSA converges faster, more accurately, and with better robustness than other swarm intelligence algorithms. Finally, ISSA is used to optimize the SVM parameters and establish the ISSA-SVM fault diagnosis model. In the Sallen-key test circuit diagnosis experiments, the correct fault diagnosis rates of SSA-SVM and ISSA-SVM are 97.41% and 98.15%, respectively. The results show that the optimized ISSA-SVM model has a good analog circuit fault diagnosis with an increase in diagnostic accuracy.

A Method of Diagnosing Analog Circuit Soft Faults Using Boruta Features and LightGBM

Modern electronic power systems rely heavily on analog circuits. The accurate detection of analog circuit faults, especially soft faults, is of great significance for the maintenance and inspection of electronic systems. This paper proposes the application of the Boruta feature selection method to the field of the soft fault diagnosis of analog circuits to screen out low-dimensional and efficient feature components from the high-dimensional time-domain statistical features and frequency-domain features of circuit responses. Then, the feature components are used as the input to train the LightGBM classification model, and the Bayesian optimization method is introduced to optimize the model’s hyperparameters. Finally, the trained fault diagnosis model is verified in two typical experimental circuits, and satisfactory accuracy is obtained.

A Novel Soft Fault Detection and Diagnosis Method for a DC/DC Buck Converter Based on Contrastive Learning

A Novel Soft Fault Detection and Diagnosis Method for a DC/DC Buck Converter Based on Contrastive Learning

A New Insight on the "S" Shape Pattern of Soft Faults in Time-Domain Reflectometry.

This paper proposes a new interpretation of the commonly observed, very specific, time-domain response associated with a soft defect in an electrical line under test using time-domain reflectometry. The reflectometry reveals the nature of a defect by analyzing the reflections undergone by an injected pulse at the impedance discontinuities present on the line. The faulty section considered in this work is modeled as a local modification of the characteristic impedance. Using the developed model, we explain how, depending on the physical and electrical characteristics of the faulty section, the associated signature yields a very specific "S"-shaped pattern. The influence of the probing signal is also investigated. Finally, it is shown that the amplitude of the reflected signal cannot be interpreted straightforwardly as a mirror of the severity of the defect and that consequently, small echoes can mask more significant defects.

Selection of relevant features to detect and diagnose single and multiple simultaneous soft faults in air-source heat pumps

Soft faults in air-source heat pump systems can cause various issues, such as decreased performance, increased energy consumption, and long-term damage. This paper presents a comprehensive modeling approach of air-source heat pumps that considers individual and simultaneous soft faults validated against empirical experiments from the literature, a perspective limited in previous research. The methodology is based on the simulation of fault-free and faulty system performance utilizing heat pump modeling software. The results are a selection of variables and their trends to select the appropriate features to detect and diagnose single and double soft faults. The model also computes the impacts of these combined faults on COP, revealing significant reductions. Specifically, combinations of overcharge with condenser fouling and undercharge with compressor valve leakages induce COP reductions ranging from 17% to 38%, depending on operating conditions. The model can be used to develop faulty heat pump data, which can be adapted to other system typologies and conditions and used as input for data-driven Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) methodologies.

Enhanced artificial intelligence technique for soft fault localization and identification in complex aircraft microgrids

- In recent years, the aviation industry has witnessed a substantial integration of power electronics technology within Aircraft Microgrids (AMs). Consequently, the extension of electrical wiring networks has expanded, resulting in heightened intricacies within these systems. Therefore, the identification and location of faults in wiring networks have become an important topic in AMs to guarantee the safety of the electrical power systems. Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is widely used to locate and recognize electric wire faults. However, soft fault location on complex electrical networks using TDR is perplexing due to its weak effect on the reflected signal. Moreover, the existence of noise in the environment can worsen the TDR's performance. In this paper, a new approach based on TDR, along with the Subtractive Correlation Method (SCM) and Neural Network (NN), is proposed. The TDR response of the complex wiring network is determined using a newly proposed model based on the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. The validity of the proposed model is established through experimentation including two distinct cable types also the introduced model notably enhances computational efficiency, a fact substantiated by our experimental findings and an extensive benchmarking against recent publications. These evaluations collectively underscore a significant reduction in computational time. Then, the reflected signal undergoes processing through SCM, a technique employed to amplify the subtle influence of the soft fault in two scenarios: one accompanied by noise and the other noise-free. Furthermore, NN is used to handle the inverse problem of localizing and characterizing the soft faults by their exact resistance values. Even within noisy environments, the proposed methodology excels in accurately locating and characterizing soft faults with a high degree of precision, all in real-time diagnostic scenarios.

Fault detection and localization in unshielded twisted pair cable based on observability analysis and reflectometry experimental measurements

In this paper, an efficient method is proposed for detecting and locating a soft fault, i.e. a physical degradation, in a Y-shaped network of unshielded twisted pair cables. The method uses jointly the observability analysis and time-frequency domain reflectometry experimental measurements. The fault detection consists in checking the consistency between the known characteristics of the cable under no-fault and faulty conditions, with the maximum value of a normalized time-frequency cross-correlation function computed on a sliding time window whose length is equal to the boundary exact observability time. The cable transmission speed and the wired network observability time are combined to locate precisely the fault. Soft faults are artificially created by connecting resistors of different values to the test cable. Experimental results show the efficiency of our fault detection and localization method.

Fault Detection and Analysis in SRAM through Self Refreshing Operation

Numerous soft faults in SRAM memory emerge as technological innovations scales down, resulting in single and several cell upsets. The increased use of transistors in space applications has rendered semiconductor devices more vulnerable to soft errors caused by harm from radiation. A single event upset (SEU) is occurring whenever a soft error produces a tiny bit flipped in a storage device. Because SEU faults affect system performance, they must be addressed as soon as possible. Error-correcting codes, like the method known as (7,4) hamming codes, were devised and their decoding and encoding procedures were verified. It also used to detect single errors that can be fixed. It also helps detect double errors, SECDED however repair of double errors is tough. The decoding and encoding techniques of these approaches were investigated, and all computational findings had been verified and executed in a Xilinx NEXYS 4 DDR FPGA board.

A fault diagnosis method for active power factor correction power supply based on seagull algorithm optimized kernel‐based extreme learning machine

AbstractTo address the issue of diagnosing hard and soft faults in active power factor correction (APFC) power supply, this study analyzes failure modes resulting from aging and malfunction of various sensitive components. The power fault waveform patterns are initially analyzed based on the circuit's THD, current ripple value, and RMS value. The inductor current signals in different fault modes are then utilized to extract and construct time–frequency fusion fault features of the APFC power supply. Finally, these feature quantities are downscaled and optimized using the RF algorithm. The SOA‐KELM model of the APFC converter is proposed, and the feature vectors under different fault modes are used to classify and diagnose faults, achieving hard and soft fault detection of the converter. The experiments show that the method achieves 100% accuracy for hard fault diagnosis and 96.36% accuracy for soft fault diagnosis of the converter, demonstrating high diagnostic accuracy.

Sparse convolutional autoencoder‐based fault location for drive circuits in nuclear reactors

AbstractDrive circuit is a critical part of instrumentation and control systems in nuclear reactors, and its performance directly influences the operation of nuclear reactors. However, comparing with the open circuit IGBT faults, soft faults caused by the degradation of electronic components present much slighter fluctuations to the performance of drive circuits. If the two fault modes co‐exist, traditional fault diagnosis models are prone to misclassify soft faults as the normal condition. To improve the accuracy of fault diagnosis of drive circuits, it necessitates to accurately locate the faults of drive circuits, while effectively extracting the distinguishable fault features is one of the critical factors for fault location. In this article, a fault location method combining the empirical modal decomposition (EMD) algorithm and sparse convolutional autoencoder (SCAE) is proposed. The EMD algorithm is applied to decompose the three‐phase current signals of drive circuits. An SCAE‐based feature extractor is constructed to capture high‐dimensional and sparse fault feature data with the aid of the powerful feature autonomic extraction capability of deep learning. A deep classifier is designed to locate faults in the driver circuit. A fault simulation model of the drive circuit is developed and the monitor data is collected. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated via a real case of drive circuit in nuclear reactors.

Generalizability of machine learning-based fault classification for residential air-conditioners

Residential air-conditioning systems are subject to soft faults, which can reduce their efficiency, capacity, and life expectancy, without being detected by the occupants. Early detection and diagnosis of faults could potentially be done by using machine learning (ML) on measurable features of the air-conditioner, such as refrigerant temperatures and pressures. This paper describes a novel approach to applying ML, which is to train a fault classifier using data from one system, and apply it to different systems. If this is effective, it can significantly reduce the cost of widescale application of ML fault classification. The support vector machine (SVM) algorithm was used. An additional question for practical application is whether the number of sensors required for input feature measurement can be reduced. This work also tests the feature reduction effect, in combination with applying an ML classifier trained on one system, to classify faults in two other systems. The results are disappointing, showing that fault classification is poor when the SVM classifier is trained on a different system than it is applied to. However, with additional work, this method has potential for improvement, possibly to a point where it can be a viable approach for field deployment.

An efficient method for faults diagnosis in analog circuits based on machine learning classifiers

The presented paper introduces an accurate approach for detecting and classifying parametric or soft faults that affect analog integrated circuits. This technique is based on the use of machine learning algorithm to improve the accuracy and the performance of fault classification process. To achieve this, the real and imaginary frequency responses of output voltage and supply current of the circuits under test (CUT) are used to extract features for both normal and faulty cases. These features are then exploited to train machine learning classifiers, from which the selected one among its equivalents is the quadratic discriminant classifier since it allowed the highest average accuracy score. The faults to be investigated are parametric ones affecting resistors and capacitors values. The proposed approach is validated using three filters circuits that are Sallen-Key band-pass filter, four op-amp biquad high-pass filter, and a leapfrog filter circuit. Obtained results indicate a high classification average accuracy for all circuits that are undergone testing. The proposed approach has provided a highest classification accuracy level comparing to other research works.

Attention Recurrent Neural Network-Based Severity Estimation Method for Early-Stage Fault Diagnosis in Robot Harness Cable.

Cable is crucial to the control and instrumentation of machines and facilities. Therefore, early diagnosis of cable faults is the most effective approach to prevent system downtime and maximize productivity. We focused on a "soft fault state", which is a transient state that eventually becomes a permanent fault -open-circuit and short-circuit. However, the issue of soft fault diagnosis has not been considered enough in previous research, which could not provide crucial information, such as fault severity, to support maintenance. In this study, we focused on solving soft fault problem by estimating fault severity to diagnose early-stage faults. The proposed diagnosis method comprised a novelty detection and severity estimation network. The novelty detection part is specially designed to deal with varying operating conditions of industrial applications. First, an autoencoder calculates anomaly scores to detect faults using three-phase currents. If a fault is detected, a fault severity estimation network, wherein long short-term memory and attention mechanisms are integrated, estimates the fault severity based on the time-dependent information of the input. Accordingly, no additional equipment, such as voltage sensors and signal generators, is required. The conducted experiments demonstrated that the proposed method successfully distinguishes seven different soft fault degrees.