Abstract: In a fault diagnostic system, an operator interface simultaneously displays an operations hierarchy and a components hierarchy in two separate windows. The display system is used with a model-based diagnostic system that monitors operational parameters of an industrial process. The diagnostic system identifies possible failure source components in the industrial process and the display system uses these diagnostics to display the most interesting portions of the operations hierarchy and the components hierarchy. The most interesting node, to be displayed with its subtree, is defined as the node at the lowest level of the hierarchy that is both a fault source and that has more children than than other fault sources at that level.

Abstract: An optimization method is used in a real-time diagnostic system that monitors alarm sources and detects possible sources of failure in an industrial process. When the diagnostic system detects one or more alarms, it determines which components are likely sources of failure. The system determines the level of criticality of certain other, currently off-line, alarms sources and schedules the off-line alarms for evaluation according to their levels of criticality. The system refines its analysis of likely sources of failure by evaluating the status of the previously off-line alarm sources Those previously off-line alarm sources are added to the grouping of possible sources of failure prior to repeating the evaluation process. The evaluation process is repeated, with the analysis of likely causes of failure being continually refined.

Abstract: In a real-time diagnostic system, an alarm sequence generator is used to test the correctness of a fault model. The fault model describes an industrial process being monitored. The alarm sequence generator reads the fault model and generates a user interface, from which specific components can be selected for failure at specified times. The alarm sequence generator assembles all alarms that are causally downstream from the selected set of faulty components and determines which alarms should be turned on based on probabilistic and temporal information in the fault model. The timed alarm sequence can be used by an expert to measure the correctness of a particular model, or can be used as input into a diagnostic system to measure the correctness of the diagnostic system.