Design of active inputs for set-based fault diagnosis

Effective fault diagnosis depends on the detectability of the faults in the measurements, which can be improved by a suitable input signal. This article presents a deterministic method for computing the set of inputs that guarantee fault diagnosis, referred to as separating inputs. The process of interest is described, under nominal and various faulty conditions, by linear discrete-time models subject to bounded process and measurement noise. It is shown that the set of separating inputs can be efficiently computed in terms of the complement of one or several zonotopes, depending on the number of fault models. In practice, it is essential to choose elements from this set that are minimally harmful with respect to other control objectives. It is shown that this can be done efficiently through the solution of a mixed-integer quadratic program. The method is demonstrated for a numerical example.