Causal Disentanglement-Based Hidden Markov Model for Cross-Domain Bearing Fault Diagnosis

In the predictive maintenance of modern industries, accurate fault diagnosis under complex conditions is now a major research focus. Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of deep learning in advancing bearing fault diagnosis. However, due to the scarcity of industrial failure data, achieving robust generalization in complex working conditions remains a challenge. To address this, we propose the causal disentanglement-based hidden Markov model (CDHM), which is designed to recognize the underlying causality in bearing vibration signals, capturing essential fault patterns for a more accurate and generalizable fault representation. Compared to signal-processing methods, deep learning approaches bypass the complex signal analysis, yet overlook the significance of signal theories in precise fault diagnosis. Nevertheless, the bearing vibration mechanism sheds light on the fact that the vibration induced by a certain type of fault has a consistent pattern across different system conditions, while the fault-irrelevant vibration such as noise and interference varies. Therefore, the CDHM constructs a time-series structural causal model (SCM), offering a new perspective on the interconnections of bearing vibration signals. Based on the SCM, a hidden Markovian variational autoencoder (VAE) is designed to progressively disentangle the vibration signal into two parts: a fault-relevant representation capturing essential bearing fault characteristics, and a fault-irrelevant representation capturing system and environmental interference. While unsupervised causal disentanglement typically presents optimization challenges, the CDHM benefits from cross-domain fault diagnosis tasks by leveraging the cross-domain consistency of the fault-relevant representation and the domain sensitivity of the fault-irrelevant representation. This design aligns the optimization objectives of causal disentanglement learning and cross-domain transfer learning, enabling mutually reinforcing optimization and ensuring robust generalization across diverse operating conditions. We validate the CDHM through experiments on the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Intelligent Maintenance System (IMS), and Paderborn University (PU) datasets, demonstrating its strong potential for industrial applications.