BladeSave's wind turbine condition monitoring

摘要

In order to develop and validate a condition monitoring system for wind turbine blades, five companies, including TWI, Renewable Advice, EWT, Halliburton and ASSIST, have formed the BladeSave consortium to combine their expertise in structural health monitoring (SHM) and fibre-optic sensing technology, as well as management software that incorporates risk-based blade data analysis. Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world's energy markets and wind turbine blades are susceptible to fatigue failure and adverse environmental effects. The most cost-effective maintenance strategy to ensure healthy and functional blades is to employ a condition monitoring system to continuously assess blade status. This means that blade defects can be detected at an early stage and fixed quickly, effectively and at low cost. Unattended blade cracks will grow and propagate under fatigue loading, eventually leading to blade failure that requires costly blade replacement.