Feasibility of Wind Turbine Monitoring Based on Modal Property Extraction: Example of a Wind Turbine in Linkou
Journal
Journal of the Chinese Institute of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering
Journal Volume
34
Journal Issue
4
Date Issued
2022-06-01
Author(s)
Chou, Jau Yu
Chung, Yi Jie
Yang, Cho Yen
Sung, Yu Chi
Su, Chin Kuo
Lin, Anderson
Weng, Aec
Abstract
Wind turbines play an important role in renewable energy. Taiwan has now planned a large area as an offshore wind farm for these wind turbines. However, the construction, operation, and maintenance of these wind turbines still need to rely on structural health monitoring methods to ensure the functionality of these turbines as well as to retain the required performance specified in the design code. Therefore, based on the on-site long-term instrumentation, this study investigates the feasibility of implementing structural health monitoring strategies for a specific wind turbine in Linkou. In this study, the dynamic responses (i.e., absolute accelerations at different elevations of the wind turbine) are firstly employed to extract the modal properties, including the natural frequencies and mode shapes. The changes of these modal characteristics are continuously tracked, while the relationships of the modal properties with respect to the turbine angular speed and wind speed are also explored. In addition, this study exploits a simplified numerical model of the wind turbine to compare the modal characteristics extracted from the in-situ measurements. This model is also employed to investigate the changes of the corresponding modal characteristics when the durability materials of this wind turbine are deteriorated, e.g., when the surface of the support structure suffers from corrosion effects. These changes in modal characteristics can be used as an indicator that informs the current conditions of the wind turbine. As found in the results, the low frequency modes can be continuously extracted and more trackable. The high frequency modes can vary with respect to the turbine angular speed and wind speed. Moreover, the extent to which the wind turbine is affected by corrosion can be observed from the changes of modal properties in the first few modes.
Subjects
Modal analysis | Structural health monitoring | System identification | Wind turbine
Type
journal article