English

Physics-informed machine learning for sensor fault detection with flight test data

Systems and Control 2020-06-25 v1 Systems and Control

Abstract

We develop data-driven algorithms to fully automate sensor fault detection in systems governed by underlying physics. The proposed machine learning method uses a time series of typical behavior to approximate the evolution of measurements of interest by a linear time-invariant system. Given additional data from related sensors, a Kalman observer is used to maintain a separate real-time estimate of the measurement of interest. Sustained deviation between the measurements and the estimate is used to detect anomalous behavior. A decision tree, informed by integrating other sensor measurement values, is used to determine the amount of deviation required to identify a sensor fault. We validate the method by applying it to three test systems exhibiting various types of sensor faults: commercial flight test data, an unsteady aerodynamics model with dynamic stall, and a model for longitudinal flight dynamics forced by atmospheric turbulence. In the latter two cases we test fault detection for several prototypical failure modes. The combination of a learned dynamical model with the automated decision tree accurately detects sensor faults in each case.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.13380,
  title  = {Physics-informed machine learning for sensor fault detection with flight test data},
  author = {Brian M. de Silva and Jared Callaham and Jonathan Jonker and Nicholas Goebel and Jennifer Klemisch and Darren McDonald and Nathan Hicks and J. Nathan Kutz and Steven L. Brunton and Aleksandr Y. Aravkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.13380},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

21 pages, 10 figures, submitted to AIAA

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:34:25.786Z