Fault Diagnosis Of Sensor And Actuator Faults In Multi-Zone Hvac Systems

Globally, the buildings sector accounts for 30% of the energy consumption and more than 55% of the electricity demand. Specifically, the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is the most extensively operated component and it is responsible alone for 40% of the final building energy usage. HVAC systems are used to provide healthy and comfortable indoor conditions, and their main objective is to maintain the thermal comfort of occupants with minimum energy usage. HVAC systems include a considerable number of sensors, controlled actuators, and other components. They are at risk of malfunctioning or failure resulting in reduced efficiency, potential interference with the execution of supervision schemes, and equipment deterioration. Hence, Fault Diagnosis (FD) of HVAC systems is essential to improve their reliability, efficiency, and performance, and to provide preventive maintenance. In this thesis work, two neural network-based methods are proposed for sensor and actuator faults in a 3-zone HVAC system. For sensor faults, an online semi-supervised sensor data validation and fault diagnosis method using an Auto-Associative Neural Network (AANN) is developed. The method is based on the implementation of Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis (NPCA) using a Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) and it demonstrates notable capability in sensor fault and inaccuracy correction, measurement noise reduction, missing sensor data replacement, and in both single and multiple sensor faults diagnosis. In addition, a novel on-line supervised multi-model approach for actuator fault diagnosis using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is developed for single actuator faults. It is based a data transformation in which the 1-dimensional data are configured into a 2-dimensional representation without the use of advanced signal processing techniques. The CNN-based actuator fault diagnosis approach demonstrates improved performance capability compared with the commonly used Machine Learning-based algorithms (i.e., Support Vector Machine and standard Neural Networks). The presented schemes are compared with other commonly used HVAC fault diagnosis methods for benchmarking and they are proven to be superior, effective, accurate, and reliable. The proposed approaches can be applied to large-scale buildings with additional zones

An investigation into the energy and control implications of adaptive comfort in a modern office building

PhD ThesisAn investigation into the potentials of adaptive comfort in an office building is carried out using fine grained primary data and computer modelling. A comprehensive literature review and background study into energy and comfort aspects of building management provides the backdrop against which a target building is subjected to energy and comfort audit, virtual simulation and impact assessment of adaptive comfort standard (BS EN 15251: 2007). Building fabric design is also brought into focus by examining 2006 and 2010 Approved Document part L potentials against Passive House design. This is to reflect the general direction of regulatory development which tends toward zero carbon design by the end of this decade. In finishing a study of modern controls in buildings is carried out to assess the strongest contenders that next generation heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technologies will come to rely on in future buildings. An actual target building constitutes the vehicle for the work described above. A virtual model of this building was calibrated against an extensive set of actual data using version control method. The results were improved to surpass ASHRAE Guide 14. A set of different scenarios were constructed to account for improved fabric design as well as historical weather files and future weather predictions. These scenarios enabled a comparative study to investigate the effect of BS EN 15251:2007 when compared to conventional space controls. The main finding is that modern commercial buildings built to the latest UK statutory regulations can achieve considerable carbon savings through adaptive comfort standard. However these savings are only modestly improved if fabric design is enhanced to passive house levels. Adaptive comfort can also be readily deployed using current web-enabled control applications. However an actual field study is necessary to provide invaluable insight into occupants’ acceptance of this standard since winter-time space temperature results derived from BS EN 15251:2007 constitute a notable departure from CIBSE environmental guidelines

Model Predictive Control (MPC) for Enhancing Building and HVAC System Energy Efficiency: Problem Formulation, Applications and Opportunities

In the last few years, the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for energy management in buildings has received significant attention from the research community. MPC is becoming more and more viable because of the increase in computational power of building automation systems and the availability of a significant amount of monitored building data. MPC has found successful implementation in building thermal regulation, fully exploiting the potential of building thermal mass. Moreover, MPC has been positively applied to active energy storage systems, as well as to the optimal management of on-site renewable energy sources. MPC also opens up several opportunities for enhancing energy efficiency in the operation of Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems because of its ability to consider constraints, prediction of disturbances and multiple conflicting objectives, such as indoor thermal comfort and building energy demand. Despite the application of MPC algorithms in building control has been thoroughly investigated in various works, a unified framework that fully describes and formulates the implementation is still lacking. Firstly, this work introduces a common dictionary and taxonomy that gives a common ground to all the engineering disciplines involved in building design and control. Secondly the main scope of this paper is to define the MPC formulation framework and critically discuss the outcomes of different existing MPC algorithms for building and HVAC system management. The potential benefits of the application of MPC in improving energy efficiency in buildings were highlighted

Vertical Greening Systems by Integrated Design Approach in Residential Buildings Towards mitigating Urban Heat Island effect the case study of Tehran, Iran

As urbanization grows, the results become more visible. Heat islands are formed due to the loss of green spaces and the consequent disruptive effects of climate change, especially in densely populated urban areas. These phenomena threaten and endanger human health. One solution to compensate for the scarcity of urban green space today is to construct urban green space within the house's walls to provide a suitable and desirable space. Vertical greening systems have recently been recognized and tested by scholars as one of the most effective methods for reducing the harmful impact of heating on the environment. Due to the beauty of this solution, it has also been considered by architectural designers, and today we are witnessing a growing trend of green-covered buildings. In this regard, the number of manufacturing companies is expanding and considering that this solution is in its first steps of growth and there is a need for further study. So, the standard process makes it more functional. This research aims to study the actual process and design of green walls. As a result, at the outset of the journey, the market's current and usable systems should be defined and segmented, followed by analyzing the design and manufacturing process's strengths and limitations. Then, by examining the divisions produced among scientists and companies, the final classification has been presented and analyzed in this study in order to standardize the production process. It should be remembered that businesses from various European, Asian, Australian, and American countries were surveyed to ensure that gaps existed. Based on the current system's flaws, a new Vertical Greening Integrated Approach (VGIS) approach was introduced to make it more popular, economical, and functional. Developing countries like Iran have a significant share in increasing the earth's temperature. However, because of the high price of this nature-based, it is less welcomed and used more as a decorative component in luxury buildings. Therefore, Tehran's study sample, one of the leading centers of pollution and population density and buildings, has been selected. Finally, based on the new approach, the selected green wall simulated on residential building in Tehran. Results show that this strategy's effectiveness was to lower the surface temperature by direct green facade about 10.95 °C and via felt-based living wall 13.95°C

Urban and extra-urban hybrid vehicles: a technological review

Pollution derived from transportation systems is a worldwide, timelier issue than ever. The abatement actions of harmful substances in the air are on the agenda and they are necessary today to safeguard our welfare and that of the planet. Environmental pollution in large cities is approximately 20% due to the transportation system. In addition, private traffic contributes greatly to city pollution. Further, “vehicle operating life” is most often exceeded and vehicle emissions do not comply with European antipollution standards. It becomes mandatory to find a solution that respects the environment and, realize an appropriate transportation service to the customers. New technologies related to hybrid –electric engines are making great strides in reducing emissions, and the funds allocated by public authorities should be addressed. In addition, the use (implementation) of new technologies is also convenient from an economic point of view. In fact, by implementing the use of hybrid vehicles, fuel consumption can be reduced. The different hybrid configurations presented refer to such a series architecture, developed by the researchers and Research and Development groups. Regarding energy flows, different strategy logic or vehicle management units have been illustrated. Various configurations and vehicles were studied by simulating different driving cycles, both European approval and homologation and customer ones (typically municipal and university). The simulations have provided guidance on the optimal proposed configuration and information on the component to be used

A study on neural network based system identification with application to heating, ventilating and air conditioning (hvac)system

Recent efforts to incorporate aspects of artificial intelligence into the design and operation of automatic control systems have focused attention on techniques such as fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, and expert systems. Although LMS algorithm has been considered to be a popular method of system identification but it has been seen in many situations that accurate system identification is not achieved by employing this technique. On the other hand, artificial neural network (ANN) has been chosen as a suitable alternative approach to nonlinear system identification due to its good function approximation capabilities i.e. ANNs are capable of generating complex mapping between input and output spaces. Thus, ANNs can be employed for modeling of complex dynamical systems with reasonable degree of accuracy. The use of computers for direct digital control highlights the recent trend toward more effective and efficient heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) control methodologies. The HVAC field has stressed the importance of self learning in building control systems and has encouraged further studies in the integration of optimal control and other advanced techniques into the formulation of such systems. In this thesis we describe the functional link artificial neural network (FLANN), Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) with Back propagation (BP) and MLP with modified BP called the emotional BP and Neuro fuzzy approaches for the HVAC System Identification. The thesis describes different architectures together with learning algorithms to build neural network based nonlinear system identification schemes such as Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network, Functional Link Artificial Neural Network (FLANN) and ANFIS structures. In the case of MLP used as an identifier, different structures with regard to hidden layer selection and nodes in each layer have been considered. It may be noted that difficulty lies in choosing the number of hidden layers for achieving a correct topology of MLP neural identifier. To overcome this, in the FLANN identifier hidden layers are not required whereas the input is expanded by using trigonometric polynomials i.e. with cos(nπu) and sin(nπu), for n=0,1,2,…. The above ANN structures MLP, FLANN and Neuro-fuzzy (ANFIS Model) have been extensively studied