Patent ID: 8775124

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating a set of analytical redundancy relations representative of a system comprising industrial equipment with which a plurality of sensors is associated for the observation of variables indicative of operating conditions of the industrial equipment and adapted to enable detection and discrimination of faults, the system being describable by a model based on the arrangement of the industrial equipment, comprising a set of primary relations between inputs provided to each equipment component from the industrial equipment and outputs provided from said each equipment component, indicative of an operating function of said industrial component, wherein each analytical redundancy relation from the set of analytical redundancy relations is derived using at least one of the primary relations and is a function of a subset of observable variables of the system, which are signals that are observed by the system based on said inputs and outputs from the industrial equipment as measured by the sensors and has a subset of the industrial equipment as its support, the method comprising generating by a computer the set of analytical redundancy relations of the system from a set V of intermediate relations established between the observable variables and non-observable variables of the system, wherein the non-observable variables represent input and output signals whose values cannot be measured, wherein each intermediate relation is generated by combining two predetermined relations R j =(N j , C j , S j , T j ) and R k =(N k , C k , S k , T k ), where N j , N k being the sequence numbers assigned to relations R j , R k , respectively, each of which is expressed in an implicit form as a tuple (i) of a subset S j of system variables which represent at least one value measured by at least one of the sensors, (ii) of the set C j of the support components for said relation, where the support components comprise at least one equipment component of the industrial equipment, and (iii) of the set T j of the primary relations used to derive said intermediate relation, where the T j comprises at least two of the primary relations at a first iteration and at least one intermediate relation in subsequent iterations which is derived by one of the previous iterations; wherein said each intermediate relation is derived according to the rule: R =( N,C j ∪C k ,( S j ∪S k )−{ x},T j ∪T k ), where (S j ∪S k )−{x} denotes a symmetric difference operation on the variable subsets S j , S k for each non observable variable xεS j ∩S k , when both the conditions: S j ∩S k ≠{ } and T j ∩T k ={ } are satisfied, and wherein the generation of the set of intermediate relations V comprises performing a series of cycles of combination between pairs of predetermined relations, each combination cycle being performed between a first relation belonging to a set of background relations and a second relation belonging to a set of derived relations.