An Adaptive Trend Index-Driven Remaining Useful Life Prediction Method for Renewable Energy Vehicle Reducers

Renewable energy vehicle reducers are now being developed towards achieving high-speeds, high-torque, and high-integration and intelligent trends. Its performance also determines the operation state and reliability of vehicles. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct the online condition assessment and remaining useful life predictions for renewable energy vehicle reducers. In those methods, the trend index construction is one of the most crucial steps. Hence, an adaptive trend index-driven remaining useful life prediction method is proposed to conduct condition assessment and prediction of renewable energy vehicle reducers. Firstly, an adaptive trend index is constructed, where the difference of the Fourier amplitude spectrum between the initial state and the current state is calculated to present the health trend index. Secondly, the reducer’s performance degradation model is built. In order to conduct remaining useful life prediction, the particle filtering is used to update the parameters of the reducer’s performance degradation model with the constructed adaptive trend index. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an accelerated life test is conducted on a three-motor test bed to achieve the life-cycle data of reducers. The proposed method is verified with the obtained data and compared with the commonly used ARIMA model. The test results show that the proposed method achieves better results than the traditional methods. It means that the proposed method is a potential one for the real-time monitoring of the health state of renewable energy vehicle reducers.