Hybrid Deep Neural Network Model for Remaining Useful Life Estimation

Abstract

The paper proposes a Hybrid Deep Neural Network (HDNN) framework for remaining useful life (RUL) estimation for prognostic health management applications. The proposed HDNN framework is the first hybrid model designed for RUL estimation that integrates two deep learning architectures simultaneously and in a parallel fashion. More specifically, in contrary to the majority of existing data-driven prognostic approaches for RUL estimation, which are developed based on a single deep model and can hardly maintain satisfactory generalization performance across various prognostic scenarios, the proposed HDNN framework consists of two parallel paths (one based on Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and one based on convolutional neural networks (CNN)) followed by a fully connected multilayer fusion neural network, which acts as the fusion center combining the outputs of the two paths to form the target RUL. The proposed HDNN framework is tested on the NASA commercial modular aero-propulsion system simulation (C-MAPSS) dataset. Our comprehensive experiments and comparisons with several recently proposed RUL estimation methodologies developed based on the same data-sets show that the proposed HDNN framework significantly outperforms all its counterparts in the complicated prognostic scenarios with increased number of operating conditions and fault modes.