A Reinforcement Ensemble Learning Method for Rolling Bearing Fault Diagnosis under Variable Work Conditions

Ensuring the smooth operation of rolling bearings requires a precise fault diagnosis. Particularly, identifying fault types under varying working conditions holds significant importance in practical engineering. Thus, we propose a reinforcement ensemble method for diagnosing rolling bearing faults under varying working conditions. Firstly, a reinforcement model was designed to select the optimal base learner. Stratified random sampling was used to extract four datasets from raw training data. The reinforcement model was trained by these four datasets, respectively, and we obtained four optimal base learners. Then, a sparse ANN was designed as the ensemble model and the reinforcement learning model that can successfully identify the fault type under variable work conditions was constructed. Extensive experiments were conducted, and the results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over other intelligent approaches, with significant practical engineering benefits.