Variance sensitive adaptive threshold-based PCA method for fault detection with experimental application.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a statistical process monitoring technique that has been widely used in industrial applications. PCA methods for Fault Detection (FD) use data collected from a steady-state process to monitor T(2) and Q statistics with a fixed threshold. For the systems where transient values of the processes must be taken into account, the usage of a fixed threshold in PCA method causes false alarms and missing data that significantly compromise the reliability of the monitoring systems. In the present article, a new PCA method based on variance sensitive adaptive threshold (T(vsa)) is proposed to overcome false alarms which occur in the transient states according to changing process conditions and the missing data problem. The proposed method is implemented and validated experimentally on an electromechanical system. The method is compared with the conventional monitoring methods. Experimental tests and tabulated results confirm the fact that the proposed method is applicable and effective for both the steady-state and transient operations and gives early warning to operators.