High-Level Feature Fusion Deep Learning Model for Fault Detection in Handling Equipment in Dry Bulk Ports

The flexibility of handling equipment in dry bulk ports is poor, and frequent equipment fault induced by the high-load and high-power working conditions greatly impacts the overall port handling operations, making accurate fault detection play an important role in improving the efficiency and stability of dry bulk port operations. However, as we know, most fault detection methods for port handling equipment depend heavily on monitoring sensor data, which is not applicable in the dry bulk port due to high configuration and maintenance cost, as well as the high false alarm rate of monitoring sensors caused by strong background noise. To solve the problem, this study proposes a High-Level Feature Fusion Deep Learning Model, which uses different deep learning sub-models to extract features of structured and unstructured data. It fuses the extracted feature vectors to achieve fault detection in the handling equipment, establishing the mapping relationship between the fault (e.g., waiting for the pre-loading process, equipment fault, and others) and multi-source heterogeneous operation and maintenance data for the handling equipment, including reclaimers, belt conveyors, dumpers, and ship loaders. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the actual data of a coal port in Northern China is employed as an example. The results show the deep learning model can achieve high prediction accuracy (over 86%) with high efficiency (0.5 s for each sample), which provides decision support for the fault detection in dry bulk port handling equipment.