As of Q1 2011, 41,400 MW of wind energy had been installed in the US and thoseinstallations are on pace to achieve the US DOE goal of 20% wind energy by 2030.With this increased level of penetration from wind generation, the stability of theelectrical grid will become dependent on the reliability of offshore and terrestrial windturbines. Structural health monitoring (SHM) integrated into the Operations &Maintenance (O&M) strategy of wind plants has the ability to both increase reliabilityand reduce O&M costs. Sandia National Laboratories Wind Energy TechnologiesDepartment (SNL) has been actively researching SHM technologies at the subcomponent,component, and full system levels in both computational and experimentalefforts for both terrestrial and offshore wind plants. SNL commissioned thefabrication of a Sensored rotor blade during Spring 2008 as a test bed for promisingwind rotor monitoring technologies, including strain gages, fiber Bragg gratings, RTDtemperature sensors and accelerometers. Following operational testing, the rotor bladewas shipped to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory National WindTechnology Center to test structural health monitoring techniques during a fatigue tofailure rotor blade test. To understand the structural state of the rotor blade, a methodwas devised to estimate Frequency Response Functions from the fatigue excitation andresponse. The results showed that the method for estimating FRFs could be used tomonitor the fatigue test magnitude, phase and structural characteristics throughout the2M cycle test.
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