Loop status monitoring and fault localisation

Loop status monitoring involves the declaration of deterministic trends, such as oscillations and drifting, in loops that are in multi-loop plant configurations. By analysing various time domain statistics pertaining to PI/PID control loops, a trend can be recognised as one of seven categories. The scientific basis for working with the particular statistics is given and the categorisation process is described. These statistics can be combined to produce an Overall Loop Performance Index for each loop, which can be compared to localise a single fault in a multi-loop arrangement. Estimation methods for these time domain statistics are outlined and the performance of the approach is demonstrated on both simulated and real plant data sets.