Distributed fault diagnosis of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems

The problem of distributed fault detection and isolation (FDI) for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems has been addressed in this work. First, a linear model is identified for subunits of an HVAC system. Next, a local FDI (LFDI) framework is designed for each unit under consideration. A distributed FDI architecture is designed where the LFDI frameworks communicate to exchange information to achieve enhanced FDI in each unit. As a result, each LFDI framework functions as intended even in the presence of faults that affect multiple units. Effectiveness of the proposed distributed FDI framework is shown for various commonly occurring fault scenarios.