A hybrid fault diagnosis methodology with support vector machine and improved particle swarm optimization for nuclear power plants.

Journal: ISA transactions
Published Date:

Abstract

The safety and public health during nuclear power plant operation can be enhanced by accurately recognizing and diagnosing potential problems when a malfunction occurs. However, there are still obvious technological gaps in fault diagnosis applications, mainly because adopting a single fault diagnosis method may reduce fault diagnosis accuracy. In addition, some of the proposed solutions rely heavily on fault examples, which cannot fully cover future possible fault modes in nuclear plant operation. This paper presents the results of a research in hybrid fault diagnosis techniques that utilizes support vector machine (SVM) and improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) to perform further diagnosis on the basis of qualitative reasoning by knowledge-based preliminary diagnosis and sample data provided by an on-line simulation model. Further, SVM has relatively good classification ability with small samples compared to other machine learning methodologies. However, there are some challenges in the selection of hyper-parameters in SVM that warrants the adoption of intelligent optimization algorithms. Hence, the major contribution of this paper is to propose a hybrid fault diagnosis method with a comprehensive and reasonable design. Also, improved PSO combined with a variety of search strategies are achieved and compared with other current optimization algorithms. Simulation tests are used to verify the accuracy and interpretability of research findings presented in this paper, which would be beneficial for intelligent execution of nuclear power plant operation.

Authors

  • Hang Wang
    Key Subject Laboratory of Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China. Electronic address: wanghang1990312@126.com.
  • Min-Jun Peng
    Key Subject Laboratory of Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China.
  • J Wesley Hines
    Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville, 37996, United States.
  • Gang-Yang Zheng
    Key Subject Laboratory of Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China.
  • Yong-Kuo Liu
    Key Subject Laboratory of Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China.
  • Belle R Upadhyaya
    Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville, 37996, United States.