A Systems Approach to Fault Detection and Diagnosis for Condition-Based Maintenance

Current methods for actuator condition monitoring on the railways have been developed as individual solutions, using simple thresholding techniques to raise alarms. These are only partly helpful to the maintainer as considerable diagnostics must still be carried out when a fault is detected. A more comprehensive approach is developed here as a general solution to diagnosis for all actuators belonging to the class known as single-throw mechanical equipment. A systems engineering approach has been used to develop the solution, by taking a basic set of requirements as a starting point and using these to form functions by collecting and evaluating methods from all parts of industry