Diagnostic
Engineer

A distributed monitoring architecture that simultaneously tracks hydraulic pressure and angular inclination during mast hoisting in drilling rigs equipped with mechanically coupled three-stage telescopic hydraulic cylinders. The system detects critical stage transitions and operational deviations in real time, defining alarm thresholds that empower operators to make informed, safety-driven decisions in the field. Validated on structures exceeding 40 tonnes with proportional valve control. It establishes the foundation for fault-tolerant control, predictive maintenance, and synchronization safety in multi-actuator hydraulic systems applied to oil and gas drilling operations.

A field-validated digital twin of a drilling rig mast raising system with mechanically coupled multi-stage telescopic hydraulic cylinders, built in MATLAB/Simulink to study the structural observability limits of position-based synchronization controllers. The research characterized 77 fault scenarios across three structural classes (compensable, detectable, invisible) and demonstrated that differential pressure is 25–140× more sensitive than position for anomaly detection. The proposed three-layer fault-tolerant control architecture combines Sliding Mode Control (SMC) for cylinder synchronization, RBF Neural Networks for 7-class fault classification (93.8% accuracy), and a Mamdani Fuzzy Supervisor for autonomous decision-making — achieving internal seal leak detection in 60 seconds with zero false positives.