On the Integration of Fundamental Knowledge about Degradation Processes into Data-Driven Diagnostics and Prognostics Using Theory-Guided Data Science

Abstract

In Prognostics and Health Management, there are three main approaches for implementing diagnostic and prognostic applications. These approaches are data-driven methods, physical model-based methods, and combinations of them, in the form of hybrid methods. Each of them has specific advantages but also limitations for their purposeful implementation. In the case of data-driven methods, one of the main limitations is the availability of sufficient training data that adequately cover the relevant state space. For model-based methods, on the other hand, it is often the case that the degradation process of the considered technical system is of significant complexity. In such a scenario physics-based modeling requires great effort or is not possible at all. Combinations of data-driven and model-based approaches in form of hybrid approaches offer the possibility to partially mitigate the shortcomings of the other two approaches, however, require a sufficiently detailed data-driven and physics-based model.

This paper addresses the transitional field between data-driven and hybrid approaches. Despite the issues of formulating a physics-based model that provides a representation of the degradation process, basic knowledge of the considered system and of the laws governing its degradation process is usually available. Integration of such knowledge into a machine learning process is part of a research field that is either called theory-guided data science, (physics) informed machine learning, physics-based learning or physics guided machine learning. First, the state of research in Prognostics and Health Management on methods of this field is presented and existing research gaps are outlined. Then, a concept is introduced for incorporating fundamental knowledge, such as monotonicity constraints, into data-driven diagnostic and prognostic applications using approaches from theory-guided data science. A special aspect of this concept is its cross-application usability through the consideration of knowledge that repeatedly occurs in diagnostics and prognostics. This is, for example, knowledge about physically justified boundaries whose compliance makes a prediction of the data-driven model plausible in the first place.