A Probabilistic Bayesian Parallel Deep Learning Framework for Wind Turbine Bearing Fault Diagnosis

Abstract

The technology of fault diagnosis helps improve the reliability of wind turbines. Difficulties in feature extraction and low confidence in diagnostic results are widespread in the process of deep learning-based fault diagnosis of wind turbine bearings. Therefore, a probabilistic Bayesian parallel deep learning (BayesianPDL) framework is proposed and then achieves fault classification. A parallel deep learning (PDL) framework is proposed to solve the problem of difficult feature extraction of bearing faults. Next, the weights and biases in the PDL framework are converted from deterministic values to probability distributions. In this way, an uncertainty-aware method is explored to achieve reliable machine fault diagnosis. Taking the fault signal of the gearbox output shaft bearing of a wind turbine generator in a wind farm as an example, the diagnostic accuracy of the proposed method can reach 99.14%, and the confidence in diagnostic results is higher than other comparison methods. Experimental results show that the BayesianPDL framework has unique advantages in the fault diagnosis of wind turbine bearings.

Keywords

• wind turbine bearing
• fault diagnosis
• uncertainty
• BayesianPDL