A portable wind turbine condition monitoring system and its field applications

Abstract

This article introduces a portable wind turbine condition monitoring system (CMS) and its applications in wind turbine drivetrain damage detection. The portable CMS based on vibration detection and analysis has a long application history in conventional rotating machineries, but it is not widely used in wind turbines. There are several reasons why it is not used, including the labor- and knowledge-intensive requirements for test setup and result interpretation. There are also reasons specific to wind turbines, such as the structural diversity of drivetrains, the uncertainty of operational conditions, and the complexity of the damage mechanism of different parts that make the conventional vibration-based CMS inefficient and not cost-effective. All these factors affect the wide application of the portable system. The portable wind turbine CMS discussed in this article is integrated using advanced vibration measurement and analysis methodology. Fault detection for the acquired acceleration response and high-speed shaft speed signal is carried out by a suite of data analysis techniques specifically designed for a wind turbine gearbox. Using these techniques, damage detection accuracy for all the components inside a gearbox is improved significantly, especially for those related to medium- and low-speed shafts. The new data processing techniques also are briefly described with the developed methodologies verified by three wind turbines with typical low-speed shaft-related component damages. These damage assessments include the low- and medium-speed planetary stage ring gear, the low-speed planetary stage planet gear and damage to the main bearing.