Tucker Decomposition-Based Feature Selection and SSA-Optimized Multi-Kernel SVM for Transformer Fault Diagnosis

Accurate fault diagnosis of power transformers is critical for maintaining grid reliability, yet conventional dissolved gas analysis (DGA) methods face challenges in feature representation and high-dimensional data processing. This paper presents an intelligent diagnostic framework that synergistically integrates systematic feature engineering, tensor decomposition-based feature selection, and a sparrow search algorithm (SSA)-optimized multi-kernel support vector machine (MKSVM) for transformer fault classification. The proposed approach first expands the original five-dimensional gas concentration measurements to a twelve-dimensional feature space by incorporating domain-driven IEC 60599 ratio indicators and statistical aggregation descriptors, effectively capturing nonlinear interactions among gas components. Subsequently, a novel Tucker decomposition framework is developed to construct a three-way tensor encoding sample-feature-class relationships, where feature importance is quantified through both discriminative power and structural significance in low-rank representations, successfully reducing dimensionality from twelve to seven critical features while retaining 95% of discriminative information. The multi-kernel SVM architecture combines radial basis function, polynomial, and sigmoid kernels with optimized weights and hyperparameters configured through SSA's hierarchical producer-scrounger search mechanism. Experimental validation on DGA samples across seven fault categories demonstrates that the proposed method achieves 98.33% classification accuracy, significantly outperforming existing methods, including kernel PCA-based approaches, deep learning models, and ensemble techniques. The framework establishes a reliable and accurate solution for transformer condition monitoring in power systems.