Machines (Sep 2023)
Data-Driven Predictive Maintenance Policy Based on Dynamic Probability Distribution Prediction of Remaining Useful Life
Abstract
As the reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety of industrial equipment have become crucial in the context of intelligent manufacturing, there are increasing expectations and requirements for maintenance policies. Compared with traditional methods, data-driven Predictive Maintenance (PdM), a superior approach to equipment and system maintenance, has been paid considerable attention by scholars in this field due to its high applicability and accuracy with a highly reliable quantization basis provided by big data. However, current data-driven methods typically provide only point estimates of the state rather than quantification of uncertainty, impeding effective maintenance decision-making. In addition, few studies have conducted further research on maintenance decision-making based on state predictions to achieve the full functionality of PdM. A PdM policy is proposed in this work to obtain the continuous probability distribution of system states dynamically and make maintenance decisions. The policy utilizes the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network and Kernel Density Estimation with a Single Globally-optimized Bandwidth (KDE-SGB) method to dynamic predicting of the continuous probability distribution of the Remaining Useful Life (RUL). A comprehensive optimization target is introduced to establish the maintenance decision-making approach acquiring recommended maintenance time. Finally, the proposed policy is validated through a bearing case study, indicating that it allows for obtaining the continuous probability distribution of RUL centralized over a range of ±10 sampling cycles. In comparison to the other two policies, it could reduce the maintenance costs by 24.49~70.02%, raise the availability by 0.46~1.90%, heighten the reliability by 0.00~27.50%, and promote more stable performance with various maintenance cost and duration. The policy has offered a new approach without priori hypotheses for RUL prediction and its uncertainty quantification and provided a reference for constructing a complete PdM policy integrating RUL prediction with maintenance decision-making.
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