A Stochastic Deterioration Process Based Approach for Micro Switches Remaining Useful Life Estimation

Real-time prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) is one of the most essential works in prognostics and health management (PHM) of the micro-switches. In this paper, a linear degradation model based on an inverse Kalman filter to imitate the stochastic deterioration process is proposed. First, Bayesian posterior estimation and expectation maximization (EM) algorithm are used to estimate the stochastic parameters. Second, an inverse Kalman filter is delivered to solve the errors in the initial parameters. In order to improve the accuracy of estimating nonlinear data, the strong tracking filtering (STF) method is used on the basis of Bayesian updating Third, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated on an experimental data relating to micro-switches for the rail vehicle. Additionally, it proposes another two methods for comparison to illustrate the effectiveness of the method with an inverse Kalman filter in this paper. In conclusion, a linear degradation model based on an inverse Kalman filter shall deal with errors in RUL estimation of the micro-switches excellently.