Fault Detection and Isolation of the Brake Cylinder System for Electric Multiple Units

Air brake systems are crucial systems for safe and stable operation of electric multiple units (EMUs). The brake cylinder system, which includes brake cylinders, corresponding pressure sensors, and connection pipes, plays a vital role in the EMU air brake system. This is because brake cylinder pressures directly affect the brake operation. Currently, brake cylinder pressures are monitored by univariate control charts, i.e., the brake cylinder system will be considered as faulty if a certain pressure goes beyond its allowed range. Besides, serious sensor hardware faults such as open circuit or short circuit can also he detected by system self-inspection circuits. However, three kinds of faults, including brake cylinder component fault, soft sensor fault, as well as gas leakage fault, cannot be well handled by current monitoring methods if these faults are not very serious. In this paper, a fault detection index called intervariable variance (IVV) is first presented to perform fault detection for these faults. Fault detectability analysis is provided, and the IVV statistic is also compared with the univariate control chart approach. Then, a fault isolation strategy is proposed to distinguish different kinds of faults and determine the location of the occurred fault. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed fault detection and isolation method is demonstrated via extensive experimental studies that are carried out on the EMU brake test bench of Qingdao Sifang Rolling Stock Research Institute Co., Ltd., China.