Attention-Based LSTM Network for Rotatory Machine Remaining Useful Life Prediction

As one of the key components in mechanical systems, rotatory machine plays a significant role in safe and stable operation. Accurate prediction of the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of rotatory machine contributes to realization of intelligent operation and maintenance for mechanical manufacturing. In order to overcome the limitations of traditional machine learning algorithms in dealing with complex nonlinear signals, a novel prediction framework for RUL of rotatory machine based on deep learning is proposed in this paper. One-dimensional convolutional neural network is utilized to extract local features from the original signal sequence. In addition, the proposed framework analyzes sensor signals and predicts RUL by combining Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network with attention mechanism. Multi-layer LSTM is set up to extract useful temporal features layer by layer and improve the robustness of the model, while attention mechanism is able to effectively solve the problem of information loss in the long-distance signal transmission of LSTM. Through the feature extraction of multi-layer LSTM and the strong supervision ability of attention mechanism, the RUL of rotatory machine can be accurately predicted. The experimental results show that the proposed method for RUL estimation is efficient and has higher prediction accuracy than the traditional machine learning algorithms.