Multilevel fault diagnostics for railway applications using limited historical data

This study proposes a fault diagnostics methodology that addresses the challenges posed by highly imbalanced datasets typical of railway applications, where faulty conditions constitute the minority class. Fault diagnostics is performed from the component level upward, considering each sensor’s proximity to its respective critical component. Advanced signal analysis, feature engineering, and automated data-driven model generation techniques were explored to achieve comprehensive diagnostics, such that the model development process accounts for variations in the operating conditions and differing levels of information availability. The proposed methodology is evaluated on datasets from the MONOCAB, for scenarios with limited faulty instances and on the Beijing 2024 IEEE PHM Conference data challenge, which focused on fault diagnostics of railway systems under various fault modes and operating conditions.