A fuzzy diagnostic system: application to linear induction motor drives

Diagnosis of faulty conditions in complex systems is a problem difficult to solve satisfactorily. A major difficulty is the lack of a simple mathematical model which is able to describe all the working conditions of the system. As a result, in the diagnosis process the human experience plays a fundamental role. If is well known that the fuzzy logic based technology resembles in some aspects the human way of thinking. Therefore a fuzzy logic approach can be adopted to try to solve the problem of the diagnosis of faulty conditions of complex systems. The aim of this paper is to present an innovative on-line diagnostic system which is based on fuzzy logic and, as an example, an application to linear induction motor drives. In the proposed system the membership functions and the rule base can be obtained by the system itself through a statistical analysis of some variables measured in several working conditions of the system under diagnosis