LSTM-Based Condition Monitoring and Fault Prognostics of Rolling Element Bearings Using Raw Vibrational Data

The 4.0 industry revolution and the prevailing technological advancements have made industrial units more intricate. These complex electro-mechanical units now aim to improve efficiency and increase reliability. Downtime of such essential units in the current competitive age is unaffordable. The paradigm of fault diagnostics is being shifted from conventional to proactive predictive approaches. As a result, Condition-based Monitoring and prognostics are now essential components of complex industrial systems. This research is focused on developing a fault prognostic system using Long Short-Term Memory for rolling element bearings because they are a critical component of industrial systems and have one of the highest fault frequencies. Compared to other research, feature engineering is minimized by using raw time series sensor data as an input to the model. Our model achieved the lowest root mean square error and outperformed similar research models where time domain, frequency domain, or time-frequency domain features were used as input to the model. Furthermore, using raw vibration data also enabled better generalization of the model. This has been confirmed by evaluating the performance of the developed model against vibration data generated by distinct sources, including hydro and wind power turbines.