Fault detection and isolation and fault tolerant building control systems

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Environmental concerns have brought energy efficiency to the forefront of research priorities. Canada currently ranks as the world's sixth largest user of primary energy. A significant portion of that energy is spent by comfort control structures that regulate temperatures and humidity in buildings; a large percentage of such control structures are installed, operated and serviced by the industrial partner for this project, Johnsons Control Inc (JCI). Current installation of building control systems suffer significantly from sensor and actuator faults, or poorly tuned control algorithms, resulting in significant wastage of energy. Development of a systematic framework that can quickly diagnose faults, and provide well tuned controllers is therefore important, both economically, and environmentally. Indeed, JCI has established an entire group, The Building Efficiency Research Group, dedicated to exploring new ways of achieving energy efficiency. In implementing fault tolerant building control, the limitations of heating and cooling equipment, the necessary start ups and shutdowns of equipment, as well as the desire to hold conditions within comfortable regions naturally requires a control framework that can handle constraints, nonlinearities, respond to uncertainties, and account for optimality, as well as the multivariable nature of the process in a systematic manner. In essence, there is a significant `energy gap' that can be bridged by well designed control and fault-handling frameworks for building control. Motivated by these considerations, this project aims at fault detection and isolation and fault-tolerant building control structures. The results are expected to significantly improve the energy efficiency of building structures leading to a positive Canada-wide impact.******