Proposal of an Embedded Distributed System for Fault Detection*

This paper proposes a Distributed Fault-Detection System for fault detection and prediction in electrical actuators used in pipelines for oil and gas transportation. The proposed system incorporates a signal processing flow that requires low complex mathematical operations using C-ANSI language. For the embedded Fault-Detection System was created a network of real-time on the RS-485 physical layer to application in electric actuators. The system is composed of Master and Slave modules using the Modbus protocol in order to communicate with other devices. To prove its functionalities a testbench was developed, which aims to reproduce in a lab some common faults and degradation processes that may occur in real world field applications. The monitoring of the electric actuators operation through this system can identify problems and faults before they become severe, providing greater efficiencies on the production line and avoid expressive financial losses. The prototype developed in this paper is based on software and hardware platforms flexible and open-source. The slave module equipment was used to collect the sensors information from specific points of the actuator. The sensor data collected and emulation were used to validate the propose fault detection methodology.