A Wavelet Threshold Denoising-Based Imbalance Fault Detection Method for Marine Current Turbines

Blade imbalance fault caused by the marine organisms is considered as the most important fault in marine current turbines. Therefore, it is important to detect the fault accurately and quickly to mitigate its effect, minimize the downtime, and maximize the productivity. Imbalance fault detection methods using generator stator current signals have attracted attentions due to their low cost, operability and stability compared to the ones using vibration analysis. However, it is difficult to extract the fault signature and automatically detect the imbalance fault under different flow velocity conditions. In this paper, a wavelet threshold denoising-based imbalance fault detection method using the stator current is proposed. The signal is analyzed through three consecutive steps: the parameters offline setting based on wavelet threshold denoising, the Hilbert transform method and the Principle Component Analysis-based detection method. With this approach, the imbalance fault can be detected automatically. The imbalance fault detection is assessed under different flow velocity conditions and validated using an experimental platform. The results are promising with false alarm and false negative rates less than 1% and 5% respectively when using Q statistic. Moreover, the experimental results show that the proposed method has good stability under different flow velocity conditions.