Fault introduction and detection in building HVAC systems

Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems play an important role formaintaining a healthy and comfort indoor climate for buildings. Faults in the systems decreasethe performance and lead to higher energy consumption or lower thermal comfort level.Researches of the fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) on the building HVAC systems havebeen presented in recent decades. However, many of them use simulation tools or software tocheck the behaviour under the faulty condition. Few people introduced real faults into the realsystems to get the responses. In this paper, four types of fault are introduced into a test facilityof building HVAC systems and the characteristics are analysed for further FDD study.