Simulation data-driven fault diagnosis method for metro traction motor bearings under small samples and missing fault samples

Abstract Traction motor bearings are crucial for guaranteeing the safe operation of metro vehicles. However, in the metro traction motor bearing fault diagnosis, there are usually problems of small samples and missing fault samples, leading to inaccurate results. Therefore, a novel bearing fault diagnosis method utilizing a track-vehicle-bearing coupled dynamic model and the improved deep convolutional generative adversarial network-multiscale convolutional neural network with mixed attention (IDCG-MAMCNN) model is proposed in this paper. The IDCG-MAMCNN model combines an improved deep convolutional generative adversarial network (IDCGAN) with a multi-scale convolutional neural network with mixed attention (MA-MCNN). Specifically, simulation data is first provided by the coupled dynamic model to supplement missing fault samples. Secondly, the IDCGAN, along with a training method that involves pre-training models with simulation samples and fine-tuning models with experimental samples, is introduced to generate high-quality samples and augment experimental samples under small samples. Lastly, the MA-MCNN serves as the classification model, trained with the augmented dataset comprising experimental, simulation, and generated samples. The fault diagnosis performance of the proposed method is evaluated on the experimental samples of two bearing datasets under small samples and various conditions of missing fault samples. It has been demonstrated by the experimental results that the proposed method exhibits robust fault diagnosis performance and generates high-quality samples under small samples and missing fault samples. Furthermore, the proposed method showcases its adaptability to different operation speeds.