Work

Fault Diagnosis of Wind Turbine Drivetrains Using XGBoost-Assisted Discriminative Frequency Band Identification and a CNN–Transformer Network

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Conventional vibration-based condition monitoring of wind turbine drivetrains typically relies on feature extraction guided by expert experience and prior knowledge. However, the effectiveness of this approach is often limited when such knowledge is insufficient or when fault features are obscured by high levels of ambient noise. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an innovative data-driven framework that integrates intelligent feature extraction with a deep learning architecture. In the proposed approach, bearing vibration signals are converted into the frequency domain, and the frequency spectrum is divided into multiple frequency bands. The relative importance of each band is evaluated and ranked using XGBoost, enabling the selection of the most informative features and significant dimensionality reduction. A hybrid CNN–Transformer model is then employed to combine local feature extraction with global attention mechanisms for accurate fault classification. Experimental evaluations using two open-source datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves high classification accuracy and rapid convergence, offering a robust and computationally efficient solution for wind turbine drivetrain fault diagnosis.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app152312726

Authors: Chiheng Huang, Wenxian Yang, Oussama Graja, Fang Duan, Zeqi Wei, Liuyang Zhang

Institutions: University of Huddersfield, University of Bath, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Language: English

Topic: Machine Fault Diagnosis Techniques

Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Affordable and clean energy

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896