Online Condition Monitoring (CM) is a key technology for the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of wind turbines. Lubricating oil is the blood of the wind turbine gearbox. Metal debris in lubricating oil contains abundant information regarding the ageing and wear/damage of mechanical transmission systems. The health condition of the wind turbine gearboxes can be indicated by the quantity and size of the metal abrasive particles, which may provide very early warnings of faults/failures and benefit the condition based maintenance of the system [1]. Fig. 1 illustrates the lubrication-oil circulating system of the gearbox used in Multi-MW Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS). The step-up gearbox consists of one stage planetary gear and two stage parallel shaft gears. The oil debris sensor (ODS) can be implemented in the primary oil channel (as shown in Fig. 1) or bypass oil channel which is in parallel with the primary channel for the online condition monitoring.
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