An artificial neural network approach for remaining useful life prediction of equipments subject to condition monitoring

Accurate equipment remaining useful life prediction is critical to effective condition based maintenance for improving reliability and reducing overall maintenance cost. An artificial neural network (ANN) based method is developed for achieving more accurate remaining useful life prediction of equipment subject to condition monitoring. The ANN model takes the age and multiple condition monitoring measurement values at the present and previous inspection points as the inputs, and the life percentage as the output. Techniques are introduced to reduce the effects of the noise factors that are irrelevant to equipment degradation. The proposed method is validated using real-world vibration monitoring data.