A Digital-Twin-Assisted Fault Diagnosis Using Deep Transfer Learning

Digital twin is a significant way to achieve smart manufacturing, and provides a new paradigm for fault diagnosis. Traditional data-based fault diagnosis methods mostly assume that the training data and test data are following the same distribution and can acquire sufficient data to train a reliable diagnosis model, which is unrealistic in the dynamic changing production process. In this paper, we present a two-phase digital-twin-assisted fault diagnosis method using deep transfer learning (DFDD), which realizes fault diagnosis both in the development and maintenance phases. At first, the potential problems that are not considered at design time can be discovered through front running the ultra-high-fidelity model in the virtual space, while a deep neural network (DNN)-based diagnosis model will be fully trained. In the second phase, the previously trained diagnosis model can be migrated from the virtual space to physical space using deep transfer learning for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance. This ensures the accuracy of the diagnosis as well as avoids wasting time and knowledge. A case study about fault diagnosis using DFDD in a car body-side production line is presented. The results show the superiority and feasibility of our proposed method.