Diagnosis of EV Gearbox Bearing Fault Using Deep Learning-Based Signal Processing

The gearbox of an electric vehicle operates under the high load torque and axial load of electric vehicles. In particular, the bearings that support the shaft of the gearbox are subjected to several tons of axial load, and as the mileage increases, fault occurs on bearing rolling elements frequently. Such bearing fault has a serious impact on driving comfort and vehicle safety, however, bearing faults are diagnosed by human experts nowadays, and algorithm-based electric vehicle bearing fault diagnosis has not been implemented. Therefore, in this paper, a deep learning-based bearing vibration signal processing method to diagnose bearing fault in electric vehicle gearboxes is proposed. The proposed method consists of a deep neural network learning stage and an application stage of the pre-trained neural network. In the deep neural network learning stage, supervised learning is carried out based on two acceleration sensors. In the neural network application stage, signal processing of a single accelerometer signal is performed through a pre-trained neural network. In conclusion, the pre-trained neural network makes bearing fault signals stand out and can utilize these signals to extract frequency characteristics of bearing fault.