A data-driven approach to RUL prediction of tools

An effective and reliable prediction of the remaining useful life (RUL) of a tool is important to a metal forming process because it can significantly reduce unexpected maintenance, avoid machine shutdowns and increase system stability. This study proposes a new data-driven approach to the RUL prediction for metal forming processes under multiple contact sliding conditions. The data-driven approach took advantage of bidirectional long short-term memory (BLSTM) and convolutional neural networks (CNN). A pre-trained lightweight CNN-based network, WearNet, was re-trained to classify the wear states of workpiece surfaces with a high accuracy, then the classification results were passed into a BLSTM-based regression model as inputs for RUL estimation. The experimental results demonstrated that this approach was able to predict the RUL values with a small error (below 5%) and a low root mean square error (RMSE) (around 1.5), which was more superior and robust than the other state-of-the-art methods.

Automated summary

This study proposes a new data-driven approach for accurately predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of tools in metal forming processes. By utilizing deep learning algorithms, this method can classify the wear states of workpiece surfaces with high accuracy and accurately predict the RUL values.