1

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

The monitoring system of nuclear power plant employs a wide number of dis-

tributed sensors throughout the plant for monitoring the status of the plant. The

sensors are used to measure the plant parameters like temperature, pressure, the

flow of liquid and neutron density. These sensors provide signals to the monitor-

ing system, and the operator takes a decision based on their reading to run the

plant smoothly. However, along with the key benefit of applying these sensor

for such monitoring, some uncertainty is also presented. The supplying signal by

the sensor may not always be exact, because the sensor performance might have

degraded due to aging, exposure to radiation and exposure to harsh chemical en-

vironment.

The sensor signal fault may happen due to sensing device, weld failure, signal con-

ditioning, hardware failure, insulation degradation, and loose contact. The sensor

abrupt fault occurs due to power failure or corroded contact. The sensor incipient

fault happens due to corrosion of the sensing element. The abrupt and incipient

failures can cause the signal deviation beyond the system threshold values as men-

tioned in [1]. The sensor signal fault may affect process performance, reliability,

process shutdown, or may happen fatal accidents. To increase the performance of

reliability, advanced technologies are applied to diagnose the system equipment.

Therefore, continuously monitoring the sensor performance of the safety critical

system is also important.

The safety critical systems are applied to a huge number of sensors in their mon-

itoring system, so it is not simple to diagnose the sensor performance. The safety
 2

critical system becomes more complex, so parallel way it increases interconnected

subsystems and corresponding sensors, in which the fault may occur either inde-

pendently or simultaneously. It is also important to know the source of trouble.

The objective of sensor validation system is not only detects and isolates the faulty

sensor but also analyzes the fault pattern. And, the designed method has to be

feasible in the real-time environment. The major characteristic of the models of

sensor fault detection, isolation, and analysis in a complex system are as follows:

• The model should be able to detect and isolate sensor fault

• The model should be able to find out the instance or observation time when

the sensor fault has occurred.

• The model should distinguish the faulty sensor from the normal sensors.

• The model should be able to detect the multiple sensor failures if more than

one sensor failure has occurred at the same instance.

• The model should be applicable for a wide range of sensors in a critical sys-

tem.

• The model should analyze the fault pattern, i.e. they should identify the

source of the fault.

• The model should detect the minor signal fault when a signal has gained a

less deviation from the normal signal.

The conventional method for sensor validation is sensor calibration. The sensors

are recalibrated in periodically. Still, this method is used in the highly safety criti-

cal system, but it cant give the continuous assessment of the sensor performance.

It is effective to detect the abrupt sensor failure for a small system where the least

number of sensors is applied. For a complex system, if the number of subsystems

 3

and associated sensors is increased, it will be less feasible. Another method for

sensor fault detection is physical redundancy or hardware redundancy. A single

process parameter is measured by multiple sensors. The process parameter value

is taken by the voting scheme. Even though the hardware redundancy method is

highly reliable, but, it is also less feasible due to cost and space constraint.

The analytical redundancy method can sort out the drawbacks raised by the hard-

ware redundancy or sensor calibration. In analytical redundancy method, a model

is built to predict the system outcome either by a mathematical model based on

the relation of the process parameters, or using historical data. In the model-based

method, a mathematical model is established using the strong knowledge of the

process parameter. Based on the system input, the mathematical model will give

the predicted values, and it is compared with system output. The deviation be-

tween the system output and predicted values is known as residual. The generated

residual is applied to detect the fault by the residual evaluation technique. The re-

liability of the model-based method fault detection depends on the availability of

the exact mathematical model. The data-driven method builds a model based on

the historical data. The strong knowledge of the process parameters is not neces-

sary. In this model also residual is generated by the deviation between the system

output and model expected value. Same as the model-based method, the residual

evaluation techniques are applied to detect the fault.

This thesis proposes data-driven methods for thermocouple sensor fault detection,

isolation, and analysis of fault pattern. The objective of the thesis is given in next

section.
 4

1.2 Research Objective

1.2.1 Thermocouple sensor fault detection

The first objective of this thesis is to detect the thermocouple sensor fault with

minimum false and missed alarms. For this purpose, data reconstruction and data

classification methods are applied. The singular value decomposition (SVD) and

enhanced singular value decomposition (ESVD) based data reconstruction meth-

ods are proposed to detect the fault. The deep learning classifier is attempted to

detect thermocouple signal fault with higher accuracy.

1.2.2 Analysis fault pattern

The second objective of this thesis is to classify the fault pattern of thermocouple

sensor. The fault pattern classification helps to find out the source fault. It is a

very effective method to smoothly run the plant. To analyse the fault pattern, first

the faulty signal has to be detected. So, this thesis proposes a two-tier method for

fault detection and classification. It is depicted in Fig.1.1. The first tier is applied

to detect the faulty sensor. The second tier is used to identify the fault pattern.

The fault is detected by data classification based and data approximation based

methods. To identify the fault pattern, composite statistical hypothesis test and

the time series feature extraction methods are applied.

 5

Figure 1.1: Proposed framework for sensor fault detection, isolation, and analysis
of fault pattern.

1.2.3 Minor fault detection

In thercouple signal, some faulty signal gets very less deviation from normal sig-

nal. These faulty signals may not exceed system threshold value. The data approx-

imation or classification methods are unable to detect minor fault. This thesis pro-

poses two methods for minor detection using statistical methods. One approach

is based on empirical cumulative distribution and the other approach is based on

time series feature extraction scheme.

1.3 Research contribution

1. A new technique is proposed for fault detection. The proposed method de-

tects the fault by calculating distance between training data residual and test-

ing data residual. For multivariate signal space, the distance is computed by

Mahalanobis distance and for uni-variate signal space, the distance is com-

puted by Euclidean distance. The residual is generated by data reconstruc-

 6

tion methods.

2. A robust data reconstruction technique is proposed namely, Enhanced Singu-

lar Value Decomposition (ESVD). The proposed data reconstruction method

is independent with the characteristics of the data. Unlike SVD and auto-

associative kernel regression (AAKR), the ESVD does not get affected for

faulty signal reconstruction.

3. A deep learning based classifier is attempted to get the higher accuracy of

multidimensional data in fault detection.

4. A significant contribution of this research is to analyse the fault pattern. Two

methods are proposed to classify the fault pattern. One is based on time

series feature extraction technique namely, symbolic dynamic filter, and the

other is based on composite generalized likelihood ration test.

5. Another novel contribution of this research is to detect the minor faulty sig-

nal. The traditional methods are not effective to detect the minor fault, be-

cause the faulty signal does not exceed system threshold values. Two meth-

ods are proposed for minor fault detection. one is based on empirical cumu-

lative distribution function. To guarantee this fault, the time series change

point detection algorithm is applied. Another method is based on time series

feature extraction algorithm.

To validate the proposed method, K-type (chromel-alumel) thermocouple sensor

data are taken from Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR). A brief description of FBTR

and thermocouple sensor fault types are given in the next section.
 7

1.4 Fast Breeder Test Reactor

FBTR is a breeder reactor. It is a loop type fast reactor. The FBTR uses plutonium-

uranium mixed carbide as fuel and liquid sodium as a coolant. The core consists of

a mixture of plutonium and uranium in their oxide forms. Surrounding the core,

a blanket of uranium oxide is presented. The breeding takes place both at the core

and at the blanket. The heat generated in the fuel subassemblies are removed by

circulating liquid sodium through the reactor core. The schematic description of

FBTR is given in Fig.1.2,which is taken from [2]. The entire system is broadly di-

vided into three systems: Primary sodium system, Secondary sodium system, and

Steam and water circuit.

Figure 1.2: The schematic of FBTR.

The important components of the Primary sodium system are the reactor assembly,
 8

two intermediate heat exchangers (IHX), two sodium pumps and interconnecting

piping. The inlet pipes are connected at the bottom of the reactor vessel, and two

sodium outlet pipes radially branch out of the vessel above the core. Two cen-

trifugal pumps are used to pump sodium through the fuel sub-assemblies in the

reactor core. Charging and discharging of sub-assemblies are done from the reac-

tor top with the reactor in shutdown state. The IHXs transfer the heat from active

primary sodium circuit to inactive secondary sodium circuit. Six control rods are

presented in the vessel to control the fission reaction.

The Secondary system includes secondary sodium pumps, re-heaters, surge tanks,

steam generator and connecting piping. The steam generator modules are housed

inside an insulating casing sodium which is pumped into the IHX by the secondary

sodium pumps. The hot sodium is returning from the IHX, enters the surge tank

and flows into the shell sides of the steam generator. After releasing heat, the cold

sodium enters the pump section. Line heaters are provided on the pipelines and

capacities of this system. Wire type leak detectors are provided on all the capaci-

ties and piping. The steam generator casing and the entire sodium in this circuit

are provided with leak collection trays with spark plug leak detectors. Spark plugs

are also provided on the bellows sealed valves.

The steam-water circuit has a deaerator, high-pressure flash tank, two desuper-

heating stations, turbine, condenser, dump condenser, etc. The high-pressure con-

trol valves in this circuit are hydraulically operated.

The heat generated in the reactor is removed by two primary sodium loops, and

it is transferred to the corresponding secondary sodium loops through IHX. The

steam generator module is connected to the secondary sodium loop. The gener-

ated streams are fed to the turbine-generator. A dump condenser of 100% capacity

is also provided in the steam water circuit for continued reactor operation when

turbine generator is not available.

 9

The core contains 745 closely packed locations. Among them, there are 85 fuel sub-

assemblies, 126 nickel sub-assemblies, 342 blanket sub-assemblies, 163 steel reflec-

tors, 23 fuel storage location and 6 control rods. The sub-assemblies are hexagonal

shape. The core is depicted in Fig.1.3, which is taken from [2].

Figure 1.3: Core in FBTR.

The fuel sub-assemblies contain the fuel. The subassembly sodium outlet tem-

perature is measured by Chromel-Alumel thermocouple (K-type thermocouple).

There are three thermocouples used to measure the sodium temperature at the in-

let of the reactor core. The central fuel sub-assembly contains four thermocouples

(Tna000X, Tna000Y, Tna000Z, and Tna000W) at the outlet and the rest of each 84

fuel sub-assemblies contain two thermocouples (Tna0nX, Tna0nY, for n=01 to 84)

at the outlet.
 10

1.5 Thesis Outline

The remaining part of the thesis is organized as follows.

In Chapter 2, the existing techniques for fault detection and isolation of the instru-

ments or components in monitoring system are reviewed from the literature. The

hardware redundancy methods may not be feasible in a complex system for cost

and space constraints. The application of the model-based method depends on the

availability of the exact mathematical model of the process parameter. Due to lack

of strong knowledge of process parameter of the plant, the data-driven methods

are attracted to forthcoming research for sensor fault detection and isolation. In

this Chapter, different approaches of hardware redundancy, model-based, data-

driven methods are reviewed. The challenging issues for sensor fault detection are

identified, and the future research is proposed.

In chapter 3, a detailed description of thermocouple sensor is given. The princi-

ple of thermocouple sensor and types of thermocouple sensor faults are presented.

There are two case studies given which are applied to validate the performance of

the proposed methods.

In Chapter 4, data classification based fault detection technique is proposed. Deep

learning based algorithm, Deep Belief Network (DBN) is proposed for sensor fault

detection. The results of DBN are compared with well-known Support Vector Ma-

chine (SVM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The performance of the pro-

posed method is validated by the thermocouple sensor data of FBTR in the isother-

mal process state.

In Chapter 5, data approximation based sensor fault detection and isolation al-

gorithms are proposed. In this Chapter, first Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)

based data reconstruction algorithm is proposed. Then, this algorithm is enhanced

and propose a novel data reconstruction algorithm known as Enhanced Singu-

 11

lar Value Decomposition (ESVD). The proposed SVD and ESVD results are com-

pared with traditional data reconstruction algorithm, Principal Component Analy-

sis (PCA) and Auto-Associative Kernel Regression (AAKR). To detect the fault, the

residual is evaluated by Mahalanobis distance (MD) and Generalized Likelihood

Ratio Test (GLRT). The performance of the proposed algorithms is validated by the

thermocouple sensor data in FBTR.

In Chapter 6, two methods are proposed to analyze the fault pattern of thermocou-

ple signal. To analyze the fault pattern, first, the faulty signal is identified by the

fault detection algorithm given in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. The faulty sensor sig-

nal is used to analyze the fault pattern. The symbolic dynamic filter (SDF) based

method is proposed for this. In this work, the traditional SDF method is extended

to analyze the signal pattern. The second method is based on GLRT. The fault pat-

tern is analyzed based on the magnitude of the fault detection parameter in GLRT.

To evaluate the performance of these two methods, a case study is provided from

FBTR in isothermal process state data.

In Chapter 7, two methods are developed to detect and isolate the minor signal

fault of thermocouple signal. In the first method, data are pre-processed by moving

average method to smooth out small fluctuation and noise. The fault is detected

by computing the empirical cumulative distribution function (CDF) distance be-

tween fault free training data and test data. The time series mean shift applies to

the detected faulty signal to ascertain the fault and to find out the location of the

change point. In the second method, a transformation function with the results of

SDF is proposed to identify the thermocouple signal major and minor signal fault.

For using the same symbol set, a novel data transformation algorithm is proposed

to transform the heterogeneous data with different signal spectrum length space

into a homogeneous and approximately same spectrum length space. The faults

are detected by analysing the state transition matrix. An alternative technique is

 12

proposed to detect the minor fault using singular value decomposition of the tran-

sition matrix. The performance of the above two techniques is evaluated by the

thermocouple sensor data of FBTR in maximum power generation state.

The Chapter 8 is the conclusion which gathers the arguments presented in the pre-

vious chapters and scope for further research is mentioned in the same chapter.