Bearing remaining useful life prediction based on optimized VMD and BiLSTM-CBAM

To address the issue of low accuracy in existing remaining useful life (RUL) prediction algorithms for rolling bearings, this paper proposes a novel RUL prediction method based on the Beluga Whale Optimization (BWO) algorithm, Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD), an improved Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM*), and a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network. First, BWO is utilized to optimize the parameters of VMD, which is then applied to decompose and reconstruct the original vibration signals. Subsequently, time-domain and frequency-domain features are extracted from the reconstructed data to construct a degradation feature set. Finally, the degradation feature set is input into a BiLSTM network integrated with the CBAM* for RUL prediction of bearings. Comparative and ablation experiments are conducted on the IEEE PHM 2012 data set to evaluate the proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that the method achieves lower Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) in bearing RUL prediction compared to the other method models and ablation methods, highlighting the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed approach. This study not only ensures the safe operation of rotating machinery but also provides a valuable reference for RUL prediction of other types of equipment.