In this paper, the problem of robust fault diagnosis of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells is addressed by introducing the Takagi-Sugeno (TS) interval observers that consider uncertainty in a bounded context, adapting TS observers to the so-called interval approach. Design conditions for the TS interval observer based on regional pole placement are also introduced to guarantee the fault detection and isolation (FDI) performance. The fault detection test is based on checking the consistency between the measurements and the output estimations provided by the TS observers. In presence of bounded uncertainty, this check relies on determining if all the measurements lie inside their corresponding estimated interval bounds. When a fault is detected, the measurements that are inconsistent with their corresponding estimations are annotated and a fault isolation procedure is triggered. By using the theoretical fault signature matrix (FSM), which summarizes the effects of the different faults on the available residuals, the fault is isolated by means of a logic reasoning that takes into account the bounded uncertainty, and if the number of candidate faults is more than one, a correlation analysis is used to obtain the most likely fault candidate. Finally, the proposed approach is tested using a PEM fuel cell case study proposed in the literature.

Peer Reviewed