A fuzzy diagnosis approach using dynamic fault trees

By incorporating digraph models, fault trees and fuzzy inference mechanisms in a unified framework, a novel approach for fault diagnosis is developed in this work. To relieve the on-line computation load, the fault origins considered in diagnosis are limited to the basic events in the cut sets of a given fault tree. The symptom occurrence order associated with each root cause is derived from system digraph with the qualitative simulation techniques. The implied candidate patterns are enumerated according to two proposed theorems and then encoded in the inference system with IF-THEN rules. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is not only feasible but also capable of identifying the most likely cause(s) of a hazardous event at the earliest possible time. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.