Gearbox fault diagnosis method based on deep learning multi-task framework

PurposeIn gearbox fault diagnosis, identifying the fault type and severity simultaneously, as well as the compound fault containing multiple faults, is necessary.Design/methodology/approachTo diagnose multiple faults simultaneously, this paper proposes a multichannel and multi-task convolutional neural network (MCMT-CNN) model.FindingsExperiments were conducted on a bearing dataset containing different fault types and severities and a gearbox compound fault dataset. The experimental results show that MCMT-CNN can effectively extract features of different tasks from vibration signals, with a diagnosis accuracy of more than 97%.Originality/valueVibration signals at different positions and in different directions are taken as the MC inputs to ensure the integrity of the fault features. Fault labels are established to retain and distinguish the unique features of different tasks. In MCMT-CNN, multiple task branches can connect and share all neurons in the hidden layer, thus enabling multiple tasks to share information.