Real time remaining useful life prediction based on nonlinear Wiener based degradation processes with measurement errors

Real time remaining useful life (RUL) prediction based on condition monitoring is an essential part in condition based maintenance (CBM). In the current methods about the real time RUL prediction of the nonlinear degradation process, the measurement error is not considered and forecasting uncertainty is large. Therefore, an approximate analytical RUL distribution in a closed-form of a nonlinear Wiener based degradation process with measurement errors was proposed. The maximum likelihood estimation approach was used to estimate the unknown fixed parameters in the proposed model. When the newly observed data are available, the random parameter is updated by the Bayesian method to make the estimation adapt to the item’s individual characteristic and reduce the uncertainty of the estimation. The simulation results show that considering measurement errors in the degradation process can significantly improve the accuracy of real time RUL prediction.