Adaptive Model-Based Temperature Monitoring for Electric Powertrains : Investigation and Comparative Analysis of Transfer Learning Approaches

Abstract: In recent years, deep learning has been widely used in industry to solve many complex problems such as condition monitoring and fault diagnosis. Powertrain condition monitoring is one of the most vital and complicated problems in the automation industry since the condition of the drive affects its health, performance, and reliability. Traditional methods based on thermal modeling require expertise in drive geometry, heat transfer, and system identification. Although the data-driven deep learning methods could avoid physical modeling, they commonly face another predicament: models trained and tested on the same dataset cannot be applied to other different situations. In real applications, where the monitoring devices are different and the working environment changes constantly, poor model generalization will lead to unreliable predictions. Transfer learning, which adapts the model from the source domain to the target domain, can improve model generalization and enhance the reliability and accuracy of the predictions in real-world scenarios. This thesis investigates the applicability of mainstream transfer learning approaches in the context of drive condition monitoring using multiple datasets with different probability distributions. Through the comparison and discussion of models and results, the scope of their application, as well as their advantages and disadvantages are expounded. Finally, it is concluded that in the drive condition monitoring under the industrial background, the target domain data has enough labels, and it is not necessary to maintain the performance of the model in the source domain. In this case, fine-tuning based on the model trained in the source domain is the best method for this scenario.