Fault detection and diagnosis strategy based on k-nearest neighbors and fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm for industrial processes

Fault detection and diagnosis is crucial in recent industry sector to ensure safety and reliability, and improve the overall equipment efficiency. Moreover, fault detection and diagnosis based on k-nearest neighbor rule (FDD-kNN) has been effectively applied in industrial processes with characteristics such as multi-mode, non-linearity, and non-Gaussian distributed data. The main challenge associated with FDD-kNN is the on-line computational complexity and storage space that are needed for searching neighbors. To deal with these issues, this paper proposes a monitoring approach where the Fuzzy C-Means clustering technique is used to decrease the overall on-line computations and required storage by measuring the neighbors of the clusters’ centres rather than the raw data. After building the monitoring model off-line based on the data clusters’ centres, the faults are detected by comparing the average squared Euclidean distance between the on-line data sample and the clusters’ centres with a predefined threshold. Then, the detected faults can be diagnosed by calculating the contribution of each variable in the fault detection index. Furthermore, for easily analysing the fault diagnosis results, the relative contribution for each sample data vector is considered. A numerical example and the Tennessee Eastman chemical process are used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed FCM-kNN for fault detection and diagnosis.