A LMI Observer-Based Approach to Fault Detection in Electrical Transformers

Transformers play a very important role in transmission and distribution of electrical energy. Internal transformer faults could cause severe damage. Existing approaches consider basically a signal processing approach or a static parity check of functionality. A model-based approach to fault detection in transformers is proposed. Based on a dynamical model a nonlinear observer is designed using LMI optimization. The considered approach is fast and reliable. Some simulations shown the effectivity of the proposed detection method.