A Novel Online Real-Time Prediction Method for Copper Particle Content in the Oil of Mining Equipment Based on Neural Networks

For the problem of online real-time prediction of copper particle content in the lubricating oil of the main spindle-bearing system of mining equipment, the traditional direct detection method is costly and has insufficient real-time performance. To this end, this paper proposes an indirect prediction method based on data-driven neural networks. The proposal of this method is based on a core assumption: during the stable wear stage of the equipment, there exists a modelable statistical correlation between the copper particle content in the oil and the total amount of non-ferromagnetic particles that are easy to measure online. Based on this, a neural network prediction model was constructed, with the online metal abrasive particle sensor signal (non-ferromagnetic particle content) as the input and the copper particle content as the output. The experimental data are derived from 100 real oil samples collected on-site from the lubrication system of the main shaft bearing of a certain mine mill. To enhance the model’s performance in the case of small samples, data augmentation techniques were adopted in the study. The verification results show that the average prediction accuracy of the proposed neural network model reaches 95.66%, the coefficient of determination (R²) is 0.91, and the average absolute error (MAE) is 0.3398. Its performance is significantly superior to that of the linear regression model used as the benchmark (with an average accuracy of approximately 80%, R² = 0.71, and the mean absolute error (MAE) = 1.5628). This comparison result not only preliminarily verified the validity of the relevant hypotheses of non-ferromagnetic particles and copper particles in specific scenarios, but also revealed the nonlinear nature of the relationship between them. This research explores and preliminarily validates a low-cost technical path for the online prediction of copper particle content in the stable wear stage of the main shaft bearing system, suggesting its potential for engineering application within specific, well-defined scenarios.