An Adaptive Prognostic Approach for Partially Observable Degrading Products With Random Shocks

Abstract

This paper proposes an adaptive remaining useful life (RUL) estimation method for partially observable degrading products with time-varying random shocks. In the modeling aspect of the proposed method, a shock degradation model is proposed to characterize the degradation process of the product, in which the continuous degradation process is described by the Wiener process, and the random shock process with a time-varying intensity is described by the non-homogeneous compound Poisson process (NHCPP). In the proposed model, to characterize the effect of random shocks on the degradation process, the degradation rate is related to the number of shocks and the magnitude of cumulative shocks. In the estimating aspect, we utilize a strong tracking filtering (STF) algorithm to estimate partially observable degradation states and a two-step expectation conditional maximization (ECM) algorithm to estimate the model parameters. In the prognostic aspect, the approximated analytical RUL distribution under the concept of the first hitting time (FHT) is obtained by incorporating the unit-to-unit variability and the uncertainty of the partially observable degradation state estimation from observations into the RUL estimation. As such, the RUL distribution can be updated according to the latest available degradation observation, thereby realizing the adaptive RUL estimation. Finally, the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by a numerical example and a practical case study for the furnace wall, which provides higher estimation accuracy and better online capability than existing approaches.