Self-adaptive fault diagnosis for unseen working conditions based on digital twins and domain generalization

In recent years, intelligent fault diagnosis based on domain adaptation has been used to address domain shifts in cyber–physical systems; however, the need for acquiring target data sufficiently limits their applicability to unseen working conditions. To overcome such limitations, domain generalization techniques have been introduced to enhance the capacity of fault diagnostic models to operate under unseen working conditions. Nevertheless, existing approaches assume access to extensive labeled training data from various source domains, posing challenges in real-world engineering scenarios due to resource constraints. Moreover, the absence of a mechanism for updating diagnostic models over time calls for the exploration of self-adaptive generalized diagnosis models that are capable of autonomous reconfiguration in response to new unseen working conditions. In such a context, this paper proposes a self-adaptive fault diagnosis system that combines several paradigms, namely Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute over a shared Knowledge (MAPE-K), Domain Generalization Network Models (DGNMs), and Digital Twins (DT). The MAPE-K loop enables run-time adaptation to dynamic industrial environments without human intervention. To address the scarcity of labeled training data, digital twins are used to generate supplementary data and continuously tune parameters to reflect the dynamics of new unseen working conditions. DGNM incorporates adversarial learning and a domain-based discrepancy metric to enhance feature diversity and generalization. The introduction of multi-domain data augmentation enhances feature diversity and facilitates learning correlations among multiple domains, ultimately improving the generalization of feature representations. The proposed fault diagnosis system has been evaluated on three publicly available rotating machinery datasets to demonstrate its higher performance in cross-work operation and cross-machine tasks compared to other state-of-the-art methods. • Adoption of the MAPE-K loop for self-adaptive fault diagnosis in cyber–physical systems. • Integration of digital twins and appropriate updating strategies. • Leveraging multi-domain data augmentation. • Embedding domain discriminators and domain-based discrepancy metrics. • Experimental evaluation on a rotating machinery case-study shows higher performance.