Average Accumulative Based Time Variant Model for Early Diagnosis and Prognosis of Slowly Varying Faults

Early detection of slowly varying small faults is an essential step for fault prognosis. In this paper, we first propose an average accumulative (AA) based time varying principal component analysis (PCA) model for early detection of slowly varying faults. The AA based method can increase the fault size as well as decrease the noise energy. Then, designated component analysis (DCA) is introduced for developing an AA-DCA method to diagnose the root cause of the fault, which is helpful for the operator to make maintenance decisions. Combining the advantage of the cumulative sum (CUSUM) based method and the AA based method, a CUSUM-AA based method is developed to detect faults at earlier times. Finally, the remaining useful life (RUL) prediction model with error correction is established by nonlinear fitting. Once online fault size defined by detection statistics is obtained by an early diagnosis algorithm, real-time RUL prediction can be directly estimated without extra recursive regression.