Adaptive Machine Learning Approach for Fault Prognostics based on Normal Conditions - Application to Shaft Bearings of Wind Turbine

Prognostics can enhance the reliability and availability of industrial systems while reducing unscheduled faults and maintenance cost. In real industrial systems, data collected from the normal operation conditions of system is available, but there is a lack of historical degradation data is often unavailable. Hence, this paper proposes a general data-driven prognostic approach dealing with the lack of degradation data in the offline phase. First, features are computed on the collected raw signal, then One Class Support Vector Machine (OCSVM) is used to detect the degradation, this anomaly detection method is trained using only normal operation data. Then, features are ranked according to the selection criteria. The feature having the highest score is chosen as Health Indicator (HI). Finally an adaptive degradation model is applied for the prediction of the degradation evolution over time and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation. The proposed approach is validated using run-to-failure vibration data collected from a high speed shaft bearings of a commercial wind turbine.