A context-aware oil debris-based health indicator for wind turbine gearbox condition monitoring

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges of optimising the correct operation of wind turbines is detecting the health status of their core components, such as gearboxes in particular. Gearbox monitoring is a widely studied topic in the literature, nevertheless, studies showing data of in-service wind turbines are less frequent and tend to present difficulties that are otherwise overlooked in test rig based works. This work presents the data of three wind turbines that have gearboxes in different damage stages. Besides including the data of the SCADA (Supervisory Control And Signal Acquisition) system, additional measurements of online optical oil debris sensors are also included. In addition to an analysis of the behaviour of particle generation in the turbines, a methodology to identify regimes of operation with lower variation is presented. These regimes are later utilised to develop a health index that considers operation states and provides valuable information regarding the state of the gearboxes. The proposed health index allows distinguishing damage severity between wind turbines as well as tracking the evolution of the damage over time.