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Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults

Author

Listed:
  • Yimin Chen

    (Building Technology & Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Guanjing Lin

    (Building Technology & Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Eliot Crowe

    (Building Technology & Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Jessica Granderson

    (Building Technology & Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

Abstract

Detecting and diagnosing HVAC faults is critical for maintaining building operation performance, reducing energy waste, and ensuring indoor comfort. An increasing deployment of commercial fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) software tools in commercial buildings in the past decade has significantly increased buildings’ operational reliability and reduced energy consumption. A massive amount of data has been generated by the FDD software tools. However, efficiently utilizing FDD data for ‘big data’ analytics, algorithm improvement, and other data-driven applications is challenging because the format and naming conventions of those data are very customized, unstructured, and hard to interpret. This paper presents the development of a unified taxonomy for HVAC faults. A taxonomy is an orderly classification of HVAC faults according to their characteristics and causal relations. The taxonomy includes fault categorization, physical hierarchy, fault library, relation model, and naming/tagging scheme. The taxonomy employs both a physical hierarchy of HVAC equipment and a cause-effect relationship model to reveal the root causes of faults in HVAC systems. A structured and standardized vocabulary library is developed to increase data representability and interpretability. The developed fault taxonomy can be used for HVAC system ‘big data’ analytics such as HVAC system fault prevalence analysis or the development of an HVAC FDD software standard. A common type of HVAC equipment-packaged rooftop unit (RTU) is used as an example to demonstrate the application of the developed fault taxonomy. Two RTU FDD software tools are used to show that after mapping FDD data according to the taxonomy, the meta-analysis of the multiple FDD reports is possible and efficient.

Suggested Citation

  • Yimin Chen & Guanjing Lin & Eliot Crowe & Jessica Granderson, 2021. "Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-25, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:17:p:5581-:d:630153
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Balaji, Bharathan & Bhattacharya, Arka & Fierro, Gabriel & Gao, Jingkun & Gluck, Joshua & Hong, Dezhi & Johansen, Aslak & Koh, Jason & Ploennigs, Joern & Agarwal, Yuvraj & Bergés, Mario & Culler, Davi, 2018. "Brick : Metadata schema for portable smart building applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 1273-1292.
    2. Zhang, Rongpeng & Hong, Tianzhen, 2017. "Modeling of HVAC operational faults in building performance simulation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 178-188.
    3. Marco Pritoni & Drew Paine & Gabriel Fierro & Cory Mosiman & Michael Poplawski & Avijit Saha & Joel Bender & Jessica Granderson, 2021. "Metadata Schemas and Ontologies for Building Energy Applications: A Critical Review and Use Case Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-37, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Rosato & Marco Savino Piscitelli & Alfonso Capozzoli, 2023. "Data-Driven Fault Detection and Diagnosis: Research and Applications for HVAC Systems in Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-6, January.
    2. Kai Yang & Tianhao Shi & Tingzhen Ming & Yongjia Wu & Yanhua Chen & Zhongyi Yu & Mohammad Hossein Ahmadi, 2023. "Study of Internal Flow Heat Transfer Characteristics of Ejection-Permeable FADS," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-20, May.
    3. Rosa Francesca De Masi & Antonio Gigante & Valentino Festa & Silvia Ruggiero & Giuseppe Peter Vanoli, 2021. "Effect of HVAC’s Management on Indoor Thermo-Hygrometric Comfort and Energy Balance: In Situ Assessments on a Real nZEB," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-30, November.

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