Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (IIT-Mandi) have developed new algorithms that can diagnose failure in components of climate control systems used in buildings. The component failure detection and diagnosis can enhance the energy-efficient operation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC) used in buildings.
IIT Mandi
The result of the team who has done this work has been published in the Journal of Building Engineering. The research has been done under the direction of Dr. Tushar Jain, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi, and co-authored by his research scholar, Mr. Mona Subramaniam A, and Dr. Joseph Yamé from Universitè de Lorraine, France.
This research work has been funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme and the Science and Engineering Research Board of the Government of India, and partially supported by the 7th Framework Program of the European Union. Dr Jain said Variable-air-volume (VAV) terminal boxes are an important component of centralized HVAC systems. Any faults or failures in these VAV boxes can drastically affect the control performance.
The VAV dampers play a significant role in the supervisory health-aware control strategy of the system, and timely and automatic detection of faults in these components can be very useful in the management of the health of the HVAC.
He further said The algorithm developed for detection and estimation of the magnitude of the failure of VAV dampers uses analytical models that are applicable over a wide range of unpredictable operating conditions, such as weather dynamics, outside air temperature, zone occupancy profile, and so on.
“The wall temperature, which is usually ignored in climate control, is an important parameter for efficient function of the HVAC and our algorithm takes this into consideration, he said.