An Enhanced Deep Learning-Based Fusion Prognostic Method for RUL Prediction

This article proposes a novel deep learning based fusion prognostic method for remaining useful life (RUL) prediction of engineering systems. The proposed framework strategically combines the advantages of bidirectional long short-term memory (BLSTM) networks and particle filter (PF) method and meanwhile mitigates their limitations. In the proposed framework, BLSTM networks are applied for further extracting, selecting, and fusing discriminative features to form predicted measurements of the identified degradation indicator. Simultaneously, PF is utilized to estimate system state and identify unknown parameters of the degradation model for RUL prediction. Hence, the proposed fusion prognostic framework has two innovative features: first, the preprocessed features from raw multisensor data can be intelligently extracted, selected, and fused by the BLSTM networks without specific domain knowledge of feature engineering; second, the predicted measurements with uncertainties obtained from the BLSTM networks will be properly represented by the PF in a transparent manner. Moreover, the developed approach is experimentally validated with machining tool wear tests on a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine. In addition, the popular techniques employed in this field are also investigated to compare with the proposed method.