Improved YOLO11 with Mamba-2 (SSD) and Triplet Attention for High-Voltage Bushing Fault Detection from Infrared Images

High-voltage bushings, the fault-prone key electrical components of transformers, are critical for real-time and high-accuracy fault monitoring and management. Intelligent fault detection via infrared images is plagued by low classification accuracy due to massive interference from similar tubular objects and small target characteristics. This study proposes a lightweight deep learning model, MTrip–YOLO, an improved YOLO11n integrated with Mamba-2 (Structured State Space Duality, SSD) and Triplet Attention, to achieve efficient fault monitoring in complex backgrounds. The training and validation dataset comprises open-source images, on-site data from a substation, and field-collected infrared images, categorized into four types: normal bushings, poor contact, oil shortage, and high dielectric loss faults. Mamba-2 captures the long-range global context of infrared features with its linear-complexity long-range modeling capability to enhance feature extraction, while Triplet Attention suppresses complex background radiation noise through cross-dimensional interaction without dimensionality reduction, enabling the model to focus on small targets and accurately classify bushings from morphologically similar strip-shaped objects. Experimental results show that MTrip–YOLO achieves a top mAP50 of 91.6% and a minimal parameter count of 1.9 M, outperforming Faster R-CNN, RT-DETR, and YOLO26n across all evaluated metrics and being potentially suitable for edge deployment on UAV-mounted or handheld infrared platforms, pending hardware validation on embedded computing devices. Ablation experiments verify the independent contributions of Mamba-2 (0.8027% mAP50 improvement) and Triplet Attention (0.89327% mAP50 improvement), with a synergistic effect from their combination. MTrip–YOLO provides a potential edge-deployable solution for high-voltage bushing fault monitoring, offering important application value for the intelligent operation and maintenance of substations.