As summarized in ASHRAE project RP-1312, an air handling unit (AHU) might suffer from 31 types of faults. Among them, 11 types of faults are of the most serious. Due to the limitation of initial cost, AHUs are always equipped with a limited amount of sensors that are vital for the purpose of automatic control. The diagnostic information is very poor. Therefore, it is challenging to isolate these faults. In this study, a proactive AHU fault isolation method is proposed to overcome this problem. Its basic idea is to introduce dynamic disturbances to the faulty AHUs to produce additional diagnostic information. The dynamic disturbances are generated through proactive actions such as resetting set-points or control signals in building management systems or AHU controllers. A list of proactive fault isolation rules is proposed to isolate these serious faults based on the additional diagnostic information. Evaluations are made on a simulated variable air volume air-conditioning system. Results show that the proposed method can isolate the serious faults of AHUs effectively.

正如ASHRAE项目RP-1312中概述的那样，空气处理单元（AHU）可能会遭受31种类型的故障。其中，11种类型的故障最为严重。由于初始成本的限制，AHU始终配备有数量有限的传感器，这些传感器对于自动控制至关重要。诊断信息非常差。因此，隔离这些故障具有挑战性。在这项研究中，提出了一种主动的AHU故障隔离方法来克服此问题。其基本思想是将动态干扰引入有故障的AHU，以产生附加的诊断信息。动态干扰是通过主动行动产生的，例如在建筑物管理系统或AHU控制器中重置设定点或控制信号。提出了一系列主动故障隔离规则，以根据其他诊断信息隔离这些严重故障。对模拟的可变风量空调系统进行了评估。结果表明，所提出的方法可以有效地隔离AHU的严重故障。