Deep Transfer Learning Framework for Bearing Fault Detection in Motors

The domain of fault detection has seen tremendous growth in recent years. Because of the growing demand for uninterrupted operations in different sectors, prognostics and health management (PHM) is a key enabling technology to achieve this target. Bearings are an essential component of a motor. The PHM of bearing is crucial for uninterrupted operation. Conventional artificial intelligence techniques require feature extraction and selection for fault detection. This process often restricts the performance of such approaches. Deep learning enables autonomous feature extraction and selection. Given the advantages of deep learning, this article presents a transfer learning–based method for bearing fault detection. The pretrained ResNetV2 model is used as a base model to develop an effective fault detection strategy for bearing faults. The different bearing faults, including the outer race fault, inner race fault, and ball defect, are included in developing an effective fault detection model. The necessity for manual feature extraction and selection has been reduced by the proposed method. Additionally, a straightforward 1D to 2D data conversion has been suggested, altogether eliminating the requirement for manual feature extraction and selection. Different performance metrics are estimated to confirm the efficacy of the proposed strategy, and the results show that the proposed technique effectively detected bearing faults.