Physics-Informed Transfer Learning for Predicting Engine Oil Degradation and RUL Across Heterogeneous Heavy-Duty Equipment Fleets

Abstract

Predicting the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of engine oil is critical for proactive maintenance and fleet reliability. However, irregular and noisy single-point sampling presents challenges for conventional prognostic models. To address this, a hierarchical physics-informed transfer learning (TL) framework is proposed that reconstructs nonlinear degradation trajectories directly from non-time-series data. The method uniquely integrates Arrhenius-type oxidation kinetics and thermochemical laws within a multi-level TL architecture, coupling fleet-level generalization with engine-specific adaptation. Unlike conventional approaches, this framework embeds physical priors directly into the transfer process, ensuring thermodynamically consistent predictions across different equipment. An integrated uncertainty quantification module provides calibrated confidence intervals for RUL estimation. Validation was conducted on 1760 oil samples from dump trucks, dozers, shovels, and wheel loaders operating under real mining conditions. The framework achieved an average R2 of 0.979 and RMSE of 10.185. This represents a 69% reduction in prediction error and a 75% narrowing of confidence intervals for RUL estimates compared to baseline models. TL outperformed the asset-specific model, reducing RMSE by up to 3 times across all equipment. Overall, this work introduces a new direction for physics-informed transfer learning, enabling accurate and uncertainty-aware RUL prediction from uncontrolled industrial data and bridging the gap between idealized degradation studies and real-world maintenance practices.