Gearbox Fault Diagnosis Under Noise and Variable Operating Conditions Using Multiscale Depthwise Separable Convolution and Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit with a Squeeze-and-Excitation Attention Mechanism

Abstract

Gearbox condition monitoring is essential for ensuring the reliability of power transmission systems. However, the existing methods are constrained by shallow feature extraction and unidirectional temporal modeling. To address these limitations, this study proposes a novel fault diagnosis framework that integrates multiscale depthwise separable convolution, bidirectional gated recurrent units, and a squeeze-and-excitation attention mechanism. This approach enables multiscale feature extraction from vibration signals, bidirectional temporal modeling, and the enhancement of critical fault-related information. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms conventional models in terms of fault diagnosis accuracy, noise robustness, and adaptability to varying operating conditions. The attention mechanism effectively suppresses noise interference, while bidirectional temporal modeling accurately captures fault propagation characteristics, thereby improving adaptability to dynamic conditions. This research provides a highly robust solution for intelligent gearbox fault diagnosis in complex industrial environments.