A Fault Isolation Method via Classification and Regression Tree-Based Variable Ranking for Drum-Type Steam Boiler in Thermal Power Plant

Accurate detection and isolation of possible faults are indispensable for operating complex industrial processes more safely, effectively, and economically. In this paper, we propose a fault isolation method for steam boilers in thermal power plants via classification and regression tree (CART)-based variable ranking. In the proposed method, binary classification trees are constructed by applying the CART algorithm to a training dataset which is composed of normal and faulty samples for classifier learning then, to perform faulty variable isolation, variable importance values for each input variable are extracted from the constructed trees. The importance values for non-faulty variables are not influenced by faulty variables, because the values are extracted from the trees with decision boundaries only in the original input space; the proposed method does not suffer from smearing effect. Furthermore, the proposed method, based on the nonparametric CART classifier, can be applicable to nonlinear processes. To confirm the effectiveness, the proposed and comparison methods are applied to two benchmark problems and 250 MW drum-type steam boiler. Experimental results show that the proposed method isolates faulty variables more clearly without the smearing effect than the comparison methods.