Patent ID: 11914357
Assignee: UCHICAGO ARGONNE, LLC
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 18:
19. A computer system for diagnosing faults, the computing system comprising:
one or more processors; and
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing thereon instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computer system to:
receive a description of a component of a thermal hydraulic system, the description indicating:
(i) a type of the component,
(ii) connections between the component and other components of the thermal hydraulic system, and
(iii) sensor information including, for each sensor of one or more sensors of the component, a type of the sensor and a location of the sensor;

construct, without using measurements, one or more physics-based models describing operation of the component based on one or more physical conservation laws, the one or more physics-based models including one or more unknown parameters;
evaluate whether the one or more sensors indicated in the sensor information are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently located to calibrate the one or more physics-based models;
select a physics-based model from the one or more physics-based models based on determining that the one or more sensors are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently located to calibrate the physics-based model;
receive historical measurements captured by the one or more sensors of the component of the thermal hydraulic system during a first time period while the thermal hydraulic system is operating;
calibrate the physics-based model by calculating the one or more unknown parameters using the historical measurements to produce a calibrated model specific to the component and to the thermal hydraulic system;
receive sensor measurements captured by the one or more sensors at a time instance while the thermal hydraulic system is operating, the time instance occurring after the first time period;
calculate residuals corresponding to differences between measurements predicted by the calibrated model and the sensor measurements;
determine, based on a non-zero residual of the calculated residuals, that a fault, of the component or of a sensor of the one or more sensors, is present at the time instance;

generate an alert indicating the fault is present in the component or the sensor;
determine an action to address the fault, the action comprising (i) shutting off the component or the sensor or (ii) redirecting flow away from the component or the sensor; and
perform the action to address the fault by sending a control instruction to a controller of the thermal hydraulic system.