Hybrid Architecture to Predict the Remaining Useful Lifetime of an Industrial Machine from Its Specific Energy Consumption

Abstract

This paper presents a data-driven flexible hybrid architecture which explores the use of a Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) index for predicting the Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL) of spare mechanical parts of an industrial electric machine. The architecture carries out a hybrid process between a physics-based and data-driven deterioration model, and a similarity model based on a recursive database continuously enriched with real data on current used electrical power and the flow of raw material. The architecture enriches the production database with both synthetic and real data through continuous improvement based on the extraction of features from new incoming real data. This recursive process of database construction is carried out to improve the robustness, accuracy, and precision of estimations. The integration of the architecture aims to enhance predictive maintenance. As an example to illustrate the architecture, the case of an industrial shredder machine is analyzed from real data. The proposed architecture successfully predicts the RUL of sugarcane shredder spare parts from the recursive database and a defined threshold condition. The RUL prognosis converges toward a representative trajectory of the database after a given early time with respect to the total useful life.