Diagnosis and analysis of diagnosis properties using discrete event dynamic systems

The basic motivation for the research presented in the article is the fact that things go wrong. With the growing complexity of todays engineering systems, the need has arisen for systematic approaches to failure diagnosis. The paper presents an approach for modeling and diagnosis of systems that fall in the area of discrete event dynamic systems. We use a relational framework for discrete event dynamic systems focusing on a conceptually simple representation of the relationships between inputs, outputs and states of a discrete event system. A fault is said to be detectable if there exists a transition in the system model that leads to a detection in a finite number of steps. The transition necessary for detection can automatically be computed from the system model under certain conditions. We also show how to compute the finest possible fault partition under a single fault assumption