Online failure analysis and autonomous risk control scheme for electric buses

This paper proposes a Cyber–Physical System (CPS) scheme to address the challenge of developing self-improvement and online risk control for Electric Buses (E-Bus) in the absence or uncertainty of subsystems’ historical operational failure data. The scheme effectively deals with the unavailability or uncertainty of operational failure data by conducting an online analysis of the system’s failure through the development of a Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Additionally, a comprehensive online risk control approach based on Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is devised to define autonomous actions aimed at enhancing system uptime. The paper presents a case study on the Electric Bus drive system, establishing a link between the on-road physical driving conditions of the E-Bus, the system failure analysis, and autonomous uptime improvement actions. The implementation of the proposed approach in the case study resulted in a significant increase in the maximum allowable E-Bus mileage distance by 8603 miles while controlling the average driving cycle. •Conducting online failure analysis of E-buses in the presence of uncertain or unavailable operational subsystems’ data.•Identifying autonomous online risk control actions aimed at enhancing E-bus uptime.•Developing a Cyber–Physical System (CPS) scheme that integrates failure analysis, online risk control actions, and real-time E-bus operations.