An improved combination rule in fault diagnosis based on dempster shafer theory

In this paper, a modified method of conventional DS evidence theory is proposed. The consensus index of evidence based on distance measures of evidence is introduced into modifying the BPAs of hypotheses with the evidence sufficiency and evidence importance. By using the Dempster’s combination rule and new decision rules, the different sets of BPAs for each hypothesis are calculated, respectively, and the result can be easily obtained. A numerical example of fault diagnosis is used to illustrate the proposed method and compare with other methods.