A dynamic mode decomposition based deep learning technique for prognostics

Remaining useful life is one of the key indicators for mechanical equipment health and condition-based maintenance requirements. In fact, the field of prognostics and health management is heavily reliant on remaining useful life estimation. The availability of industrial big data has enabled promising research efforts in prognostics and health management. Deep learning techniques have been widely adopted, and proven to be successful in big data prognostics applications. However, deep learning approaches are considered black box approaches with interpretation difficulties and loss of information due to high-level feature extraction resulting from layer-by-layer processing. Enriching the deep learning input with temporal features can increase the performance of deep learning based approaches. This paper aims to improve the performance of deep learning techniques by incorporating dynamic mode decomposition into the deep learning schemes for the purposes of remaining useful life estimation. The developed method is capable of accurately predicting the remaining useful life in a data driven manner without prior knowledge of system equations. The input temporal information and health state are enriched by using dynamic mode decomposition which produces dynamic modes that approximate the infinite Koopman operator modes. The modes contain coherent time dynamics of the processed system which contribute to producing a health indicator that is representative of the system degradation. These time dependent dynamics are important characteristics of the system’s health state. The degradation profile is incorporated into deep learning schemes that accurately predict the remaining useful life of the system. To validate the proposed model, two different experimental data repositories are used in this paper. The first one is a spiral bevel gear vibration dataset. The second one consists of turbofan engines vibration datasets. The validation results have shown improved remaining useful life estimation performance when dynamic mode decomposition technique is incorporated into the deep learning schemes presented in this paper.