Fault monitoring in hydraulic systems using unscented Kalman filter

• Main Author: Sepasi, Mohammad
• Language: en
• Published: University of British Columbia 2007
• Subjects: hydraulic system; unscented Kalman filter; fault detection; fault diagnosis
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/206

Condition monitoring of hydraulic systems is an area that has grown substantially in the last few decades. This thesis presents a scheme that automatically generates the fault symptoms by on-line processing of raw sensor data from a real test rig. The main purposes of implementing condition monitoring in hydraulic systems are to increase productivity, decrease maintenance costs and increase safety. Since such systems are widely used in industry and becoming more complex in function, reliability of the systems must be supported by an efficient monitoring and maintenance scheme. This work proposes an accurate state space model together with a novel model-based fault diagnosis methodology. The test rig has been fabricated in the Process Automation and Robotics Laboratory at UBC. First, a state space model of the system is derived. The parameters of the model are obtained through either experiments or direct measurements and manufacturer specifications. To validate the model, the simulated and measured states are compared. The results show that under normal operating conditions the simulation program and real system produce similar state trajectories. For the validated model, a condition monitoring scheme based on the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is developed. In simulations, both measurement and process noises are considered. The results show that the algorithm estimates the iii system states with acceptable residual errors. Therefore, the structure is verified to be employed as the fault diagnosis scheme. Five types of faults are investigated in this thesis: loss of load, dynamic friction load, the internal leakage between the two hydraulic cylinder chambers, and the external leakage at either side of the actuator. Also, for each leakage scenario, three levels of leakage are investigated in the tests. The developed UKF-based fault monitoring scheme is tested on the practical system while different fault scenarios are singly introduced to the system. A sinusoidal reference signal is used for the actuator displacement. To diagnose the occurred fault in real time, three criteria, namely residual moving average of the errors, chamber pressures, and actuator characteristics, are considered. Based on the presented experimental results and discussions, the proposed scheme can accurately diagnose the occurred faults.