Comparison of fault detection techniques for an ocean turbine

Abstract

The Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center at Florida Atlantic University, which supersedes the Center for Ocean Energy Technology (Driscoll et al., 2008), is conducting research and development to support the implementation of ocean current and ocean thermal energy technologies for a low environmental-impact extraction of energy. Fault detection capability is needed for these offshore ocean turbines (and other systems) because access to these machines for maintenance is difficult and costly. Techniques that offer reliable and early (incipient) detection allow for preventive maintenance to prevent the development of secondary faults that may be generated by the primary faults. Several methods for processing and displaying vibration data are compared and evaluated relative to synergistic detection utilizing data from a prototype (dynamometer) of an ocean current turbine. The results may generically apply to other machines, such as wind turbines.