Failure Prediction
Failure Prediction
Scientific Programming
Volume 2020, Article ID 8616039, 10 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8616039
Research Article
Failure Prediction of Aircraft Equipment Using Machine
Learning with a Hybrid Data Preparation Method
1
Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Havelsan, Ankara 06510, Turkey
2
Department of Computer Engineering, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya 42090, Turkey
3
Department of Computer Engineering, Konya Technical University, Konya 42250, Turkey
Received 12 January 2020; Revised 17 February 2020; Accepted 4 August 2020; Published 28 August 2020
Copyright © 2020 Kadir Celikmih et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
There is a large amount of information and maintenance data in the aviation industry that could be used to obtain meaningful
results in forecasting future actions. This study aims to introduce machine learning models based on feature selection and data
elimination to predict failures of aircraft systems. Maintenance and failure data for aircraft equipment across a period of two years
were collected, and nine input and one output variables were meticulously identified. A hybrid data preparation model is proposed
to improve the success of failure count prediction in two stages. In the first stage, ReliefF, a feature selection method for attribute
evaluation, is used to find the most effective and ineffective parameters. In the second stage, a K-means algorithm is modified to
eliminate noisy or inconsistent data. Performance of the hybrid data preparation model on the maintenance dataset of the
equipment is evaluated by Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) as Artificial Neural network (ANN), Support Vector Regression (SVR),
and Linear Regression (LR) as machine learning algorithms. Moreover, performance criteria such as the Correlation Coefficient
(CC), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) are used to evaluate the models. The results indicate that
the hybrid data preparation model is successful in predicting the failure count of the equipment.
the decision making system. It manages the data to make it assess the frequency of problems in the systems of water supply.
useful for decision. The decision making depends on future Ramos et al. [13] carried out a study to predict malfunctions
forecasting, failure event, and availability of equipment [4]. and to do predictive maintenance practices in a piece of
Data mining is a way of classifying and clamping data into manufacturing equipment. In this study, ARIMA forecasting
comprehensible information. It comprehends the applicable methods were successfully compared with neural network
models from a mass of information and adopts different models. The results indicated that both models were good at
approaches to uncover secret data. Data mining can be forecasting defibrator disc replacement, but the ARIMA was
defined as knowledge derivation from raw data [5]. much better in the forecasting the distance between the discs.
Feature selection is a fundamental issue in data mining Trani et al. [14] introduced a basic method to estimate aircraft
and machine learning algorithms that focus on the features fuel consumption through the use of an artificial neural net-
which are the most relevant to the intended prediction [6]. work. A fuel consumption model supported by a neural net-
Features collected from the observation of a circumstance are work was created by using the data given in the performance
not all equivalently significant. Normally, operational data manual of the aircraft. The results from the neural network
tend to be incomplete, insufficient, or partially meaningful or model were compared with analytical models. The results
not meaningful at all. Some of them may be noisy, redundant, revealed that the proposed three-layer ANN with nonlinear
or irrelevant. Feature selection aims to choose a feature set transfer functions could correctly estimate fuel consumption in
that is relevant to a specific duty. This problem is a complex different stages of a flight. Ming et al. [15] investigated the use of
and multidimensional issue [7]. Hsu [8] proposed a novel the ANN method in vibration analysis by using the integrated
feature selection algorithm based on the correlation coeffi- data from the devices of vibration to predict equipment failures.
cient clustering method. It focused on reducing noisy, re- The ANN model was applied to diagnose the faults in a mill.
peated, or redundant features. The performance in the The results lent support to the efficiency of this methodology.
computational speed and the classification accuracy can be Kozik and Sep [16] applied ANN forecasting to identify the
improved through the removal of the irrevelant features. demand for spare parts to be replaced during aircraft engine
Methods of data processing helps improve the quality of the overhaul. The results indicated that the forecasting method that
data and increase the accuracy of data mining, thereby is composed of the engine’s hardtime calculation should be a
making it more efficient [8]. Data quality is important for the power in the implementation of lean manufacturing in MRO
process of information discovery, checking data anomalies, (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) facilities. Altay et al. [17]
and predicting and analyzing for decision making [9]. Pre- used 532 failures of 60 aircraft to model an artificial neural
dicting equipment failures are essential to reduce repair and network to forecast failures. The proposed model produced
equipment costs and to assess equipment availability [1]. high correlation rates of prediction between the actual and
Mass data can be useful for businesses and can guide target failure times of aircraft. Benkedjouh et al. [18] proposed a
systems to follow right paths. To boost performance in ma- method to guess the useful life (RUL) in machinery with
chine learning algorithms, it is critical that meaningful in- bearings. For this purpose, the researchers used the isometric
formation be gathered from the dataset. To eliminate noisy feature mapping reduction technique (ISOMAP) and support
and irrevelant data during data preparation, we used K-means vector regression (SVR). Moura et al. [19] presented an analysis
clustering algorithm, which is one of the popular unsuper- to comparatively assess the SVM effectiveness in predicting
vised machine learning algorithms. It defines k number of failure time. The performance of SVM regression is compared
centroids and allocates every case to the nearest cluster while with other learning methods.
keeping the centroids small [10]. The “means” in the K-means This paper discusses the feature selection of variables in the
refers to the averaging of the dataset to find the centroid. This maintenance data obtained from an aviation company in
algorithm assigns each case to only a single set. The purpose is Turkey. The proposed system will help companies to collect,
to accomplish a high level of similarity within the clusters and extract, and create data to improve the maintenance actions
low similarly across them [11]. It is used for more effective and through more accurate predictions. This study proposes a
better clustering with decreased complexity. hybrid data preparation method for maintenance data and
There are many studies on maintenance data and fore- predicting failure counts of equipment by comparing the re-
casting failure rates. Data preparation is a critical step in the sults of three different algorithms. The feature selection method
feature selection process, and it has a major effect on the success (ReliefF algorihm in the present study) is used for selecting
of a machine learning algorithm. Gurbuz et al. [9] applied attributes, and the modified K-means algorithm is used to
various techniques of preprocessing along with feature selec- eliminate the redundant data. Three methods for predicting
tion on 15 datasets of a Turkish airline company to understand equipment failure counts are introduced and compared using
and clean the dataset and to find the relationships between MLP as an ANN algorithm, SVR algorithm, and LR. The next
input and output features. They came up with 15 rules for section presents an overview of the materials and methodology,
creating failure alerts, and these were found useful by the followed by experimental results and conclusions.
experts of the aviation company. Classification algorithm was
used to extract patterns within equipment data. Kutlylowska 2. Materials and Methodology
[12] proposed the application of artificial neural networks to
failure rate modelling. Data from a water utility in Poland were The context in which the present case study was carried out
used to estimate the output values of failure frequency. The was an avitation company in Ankara, Turkey. The main-
results showed that artificial networks could be an option to tenance data were collected from the records of the
Scientific Programming 3
maintenance department. They included removal of the distance criterion as the Euclidean distance measure-
equipment, repair activities, experience of the operators, ment. Fahad and Alam [10] proposed a method by using
flight hours of the equipment, and other information rel- modified K-means algorithm, which proved less time con-
evant to the case study. suming yet more efficient in clustering. The quality of the
resulting clusters depends on the selection of the initial
centroid. K-means algorithm makes it possible to create a
2.1. Dataset Acquisition. In the ERP platform, a program is new data cluster by eliminating the smallest class value
developed to collect data and to format the dataset for represented in the cluster. Yilmaz et al. [11] proposed a
analysis through machine algorithms. The variables were system using modified K-means algorithm to eliminate
grouped as the input variables, while the failure count was noisy and irrevelant data. In this study, we used modified K-
considered to be the output variable. Selected parameters are means algorithm as in [11] and developed the pseudocode
evaluated by the feature selection ReliefF method to find the given in Algorithm 1.
most influential parameters that have a share in the failures.
Flow logic of the developed program is presented in
Figure 1. Firstly, the selected materials’ serial-numbered 2.4. Prediction Methods. In recent years, research on ma-
equipment used in the landing gear system was selected. chine learning algorithms and data mining has been carried
Their maintenance and operational data were identified. out to study failure prediction applications. In this study, the
Attributes of the maintenance and failure data were iden- MLP, SVR, and LR algorithms were examined to model
tified in cooperation with maintenance personnel and maintenance data and predict the failure count.
technicians. Each instance of a no fault found (NFF) status
was examined to find confirmed failure data. The total flight
hours for each piece of equipment across different aircraft 2.4.1. Multilayer Perceptron as an Artificial Neural Network.
were calculated for a given time period. Nine input variables An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a mathematical
that affect the failure of the equipment were determined. The model based on a biological interconnected group of arti-
failure count was calculated as an output variable. These nine ficial neurons. ANN imitates the brain’s ability to process the
input variables and an output variables were used for information approach to computation [24, 25]. Neural
modelling the machine learning algorithms used in the networks are a nonlinear statistical data modelling and
present study (MLP, SVR, and LR). machine learning method. They can be used to model
complex nonlinear relationships between inputs and outputs
in the data. They also describe patterns or relationships in
2.2. Feature Selection and ReliefF Algorithm. Feature selec- the data, and they help forecast output values with the help
tion is a technique to obtain the relevant features by re- of training, learning, and testing processes. A cell in a neural
moving irrelevant and noisy data from the original dataset. It network is called a neuron, and a fixed number of neurons
is the process of selecting a subset of features that could build a layer. Neurons connect to other neurons in other
adequately depict all the datasets. The main objective of layers by a weight factor. ANN algorithms compute weights
feature selection is to mine the data to obtain the minimum for input values, hidden layer, and output layer neurons by a
number of features to achieve maximum accuracy. Feature feed forward approach [26, 27]. Weights in an ANN are
selection methods are used in data mining and machine calculated by using a training algorithm as the most popular
learning, as well as in artificial intelligence. They reduce backpropagation algorithm. Backpropagation is a learning
model complexity and let algorithms operate faster. Relief is algorithm that seeks to minimize the difference between the
a feature selection algorithm used for random selection of real and target outputs. The weights are updated, so that the
instances for feature weight calculation. The Relief algorithm total error is distributed to the various neurons in the neural
is proposed by Kira and Rendell in 1992 [20, 21]. It estimates network. The error remains at a low level through feeding
feature weights iteratively, according to their ability to make forward and backpropagating [17]. The predictive capability
a distinction between neighboring models. Relief was ex- of neural networks comes from their multilayered structure.
tended to deal with noisy, irrevelant, and missing data to Neural networks have an input layer, one or more hidden
address multiclass issues. Kononenko [22] proposed an layers, and an output layer. MLP algorithms are comprised
extension to Relief called ReliefF to address the multiclass of the activation function of the neurons [28]. In this study,
problems. ReliefF is an extension of the Relief algorithm, multilayer perceptron (MLP) feed forward neural networks
which fails to remove irrelevant or incomplete features in were used with a backpropagation learning algorithm.
two-class classification problems. The ReliefF algorithm
finds one near miss for each different class and averages their
value to revise feature weights. 2.4.2. Support Vector Regression. Support Vector Machines
(SVM) algorithm was introduced by Cortes and Vapnik in
1995 [29]. It is a linear model used to address classification
2.3. Data Elimination and Modified K-Means Algorithm. and regression problems. The SVM algorithm produces a
K-means, a widely used algorithm in a wide range of ap- hyperplane that classifies the data. There are two distinct
plications, was first developed in 1967 by MacQueen [23]. It classes separated by a linear plane. The training in the al-
allows each data point to be a member of a single set. It has gorithm involves the process of identifying the parameters
limitation fields: fixed K value and an initial centroid. It uses [11]. Support Vector Regression (SVR) is a regression
4 Scientific Programming
Table 1: The nine input variables and an output variable obtained from the maintenance data.
Parameter Description
Flight hours (FH) The total duration of flight for an equipment on different aircraft in a selected time period
RM The number of removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
PR The number of planned removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
UR The number of unplanned removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
OR The number of other removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
FR The number of faults with removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
FPR The number of faults with planned removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
FUR The number of faults with unplanned removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
SR The number of safe removals of the equipment in the last 24 months
NF (output) The number of equipment failures in the last 24 months
and the number of faults with planned/unplanned removals. Seventy-five records (approximately 13%) of the dataset
These data were analysed and represented in a format were eliminated by the pseudocode of the proposed data
suitable for modelling, and variables were characterised with preparation model. Five hundred and ten records were
the corresponding domain classification, shown in Table 1. obtained from 585 records of the dataset. Our proposed
The output variable is the number of equipment failures. A hybrid data preparation model is comprised of two stages, as
sample of the dataset is provided in Table 2. shown in Figure 3. In the first stage, nine input attributes
Feature selection is carried out using these ten attributes. were reduced to four attributes by feature selection ReliefF
The number of equipment failures is the target of the algorithm. In the second stage, the dataset was reduced to
analysis. For this purpose, feature selection ReliefF algo- 510 records by the modified K-means algorithm. The ob-
rithm was used to find relations and weighting coefficient tained dataset with 510 records were provided as inputs to
dependencies. According to the ranked values, four most the MLP, SVM, and LR prediction algorithms.
effective attributes were selected (Table 3).
Noisy and inconsistent data in the prepared datasets 4. Experimental Results
often affect prediction negatively and reduce the perfor-
mance of the system. Therefore, the modified K-means al- A program is developed to gather data for analysis through
gorithm was used to eliminate the noisy and inconsistent machine algorithms. Selected equipment’s maintenance and
data to increase the performance of the prediction. It was operational data were identified. Nine input variables and an
developed using the pseudocode given in Algorithm 1. In output variable were determined. According to using pure
this model, set centers are initially allocated, and instances 585 rows, nine inputs, and an output (585 × 10) data, MLP,
are properly distributed to the sets. A predetermined LR, and SVR models were trained and tested. The param-
number (N � 5) of records furthest to the center in each set eters of the predictors used in the study are provided in
were eliminated. The distance criterion was the Euclidean Tables 4–6, respectively.
distance measurement. The eliminated instances are shown To illustrate the performance of the suggested two-phase
in Figure 2. hybrid system, the prediction results for the raw dataset that
6 Scientific Programming
Input
Dataset Elimination
dataset
Table 8: Performance rating of the models for (585 × 5) dataset (4 inputs and 1 output).
Method CC MAE RMSE
LR 0.8967 0.7341 1.0646
MLP 0.9127 0.7301 0.9853
SVR 0.9013 0.7415 1.0909
6
4
2
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Predicted
Figure 4: Correlation between predicted and target values of the dataset for LR.
6
4
2
0
–2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
–2
Predicted
Figure 5: Correlation between predicted and target values of the dataset for SVR.
6
4
2
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Predicted
Figure 6: Correlation between predicted and target values of the dataset for MLP.
8 Scientific Programming
10
8
Failures
6
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
Times
Predicted
Target
Figure 7: Test data for the prediction and target values of 1-fold CV for the LR.
10
8
Failures
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
Times
Predicted
Target
Figure 8: Test data for the prediction and target values of 1-fold CV for the SVR.
12
10
Failures
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
Times
Predicted
Target
Figure 9: Test data for the prediction and target values of 1-fold CV for the MLP.
Scientific Programming 9