Advanced Fault Detection and Diagnosis Exploiting Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Applications

Davide Paolini, Pierpaolo Dini, Abdussalam Elhanashi, Sergio Saponara

Modern engineering systems require reliable and timely Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) to ensure operational safety and resilience. Traditional model-based and rule-based approaches, although interpretable, exhibit limited scalability and adaptability in complex, data-intensive environments. This survey provides a systematic overview of recent studies exploring Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for FDD across industrial, energy, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)/Internet of Things (IoT), and cybersecurity domains. Deep architectures such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Transformers, and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are compared with unsupervised, hybrid, and physics-informed frameworks, emphasizing their respective strengths in adaptability, robustness, and interpretability. Quantitative synthesis and radar-based assessments suggest that AI-driven FDD approaches offer increased adaptability, scalability, and early fault detection capabilities compared to classical methods, while also introducing new challenges related to interpretability, robustness, and deployment. Emerging research directions include the development of foundation and multimodal models, federated learning (FL), and privacy-preserving learning, as well as physics-guided trustworthy AI. These trends indicate a paradigm shift toward self-adaptive, interpretable, and collaborative FDD systems capable of sustaining reliability, transparency, and autonomy across critical infrastructures.