AI-Powered Machine Learning Approaches for Fault Diagnosis in Industrial Pumps

Abstract

This study presents a practical approach for early fault detection in industrial pump systems using real-world sensor data from a large-scale vertical centrifugal pump operating in a demanding marine environment. Five key operational parameters were monitored: vibration, temperature, flow rate, pressure, and electrical current. A dual-threshold labeling method was applied, combining fixed engineering limits with adaptive thresholds calculated as the 95th percentile of historical sensor values. To address the rarity of documented failures, synthetic fault signals were injected into the data using domain-specific rules, simulating critical alerts within plausible operating ranges. Three machine learning classifiers - Random Forest, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) - were trained to distinguish between normal operation, early warnings, and critical alerts. Results showed that Random Forest and XGBoost models achieved high accuracy across all classes, including minority cases representing rare or emerging faults, while the SVM model exhibited lower sensitivity to anomalies. Visual analyses, including grouped confusion matrices and time-series plots, indicated that the proposed hybrid method provides robust detection capabilities. The framework is scalable, interpretable, and suitable for real-time industrial deployment, supporting proactive maintenance decisions before failures occur. Furthermore, it can be adapted to other machinery with similar sensor architectures, highlighting its potential as a scalable solution for predictive maintenance in complex systems.