Distributed fault diagnosis in a class of interconnected nonlinear uncertain systems

In this article, a distributed fault detection and isolation (FDI) method is developed for a class of interconnected nonlinear uncertain systems. In the distributed FDI architecture, a FDI component is designed for each subsystem in the interconnected system. For each subsystem, its corresponding local FDI component is designed by utilising local measurements and certain communicated information from neighbouring FDI components associated with subsystems that are directly interconnected to the particular subsystem under consideration. Under certain assumptions, adaptive thresholds for distributed FDI in each subsystem are derived, ensuring robustness with respect to interactions among subsystems and system modelling uncertainty. Moreover, the fault detectability and isolability conditions are rigorously investigated, characterising the class of faults in each subsystem that are detectable and isolable by the proposed distributed FDI method. Additionally, the stability and learning capability of the local adaptive fault isolation estimators designed for each subsystem is established. A simulation example of interconnected inverted pendulums mounted on carts is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the method.