Wind Speed Dependency of Low-Frequency Vibration Levels in Full-Scale Wind Turbines

A series of continuous vibration measurements in 14 upwind wind turbines of the same model and belonging to the same wind farm have been conducted. The data were acquired over a period lasting approximately half a year. The tower axial vibration acceleration has been monitored in the frequency band from 0 to 10 Hz with an accelerometer mounted on the gearbox casing between the intermediate and the high-speed shafts. It has been observed that the average frequency spectrum is dominated by the blade passing frequency in all the wind turbines. The evolution of the vibration magnitudes over the entire range of operating conditions is also very similar for all the wind turbines. The root-meansquare (rms) acceleration value has been correlated with the wind speed, and it has been found that a linear fit with a positive slope is a useful model for prediction purposes.

[1]  Anindya Ghoshal,et al.  Structural health monitoring techniques for wind turbine blades , 2000 .

[2]  Erich Hau,et al.  Wind Turbines: Fundamentals, Technologies, Application, Economics , 1999 .

[3]  C. P. van Dam,et al.  Blade-Wake Interaction Noise for Turbines With Downwind Rotors , 2003 .

[4]  Soogab Lee,et al.  Influence of blade-tower interaction in upwind-type horizontal axis wind turbines on aerodynamics , 2011 .

[5]  Daniel Rixen,et al.  Feasibility of monitoring large wind turbines using photogrammetry , 2010 .

[6]  David Infield,et al.  Online wind turbine fault detection through automated SCADA data analysis , 2009 .

[7]  Wenyi Liu,et al.  Wind turbine fault diagnosis based on Morlet wavelet transformation and Wigner-Ville distribution , 2010 .

[8]  Tongdan Jin,et al.  Condition based maintenance optimization for wind power generation systems under continuous monitoring , 2011 .

[9]  Jochen Twele,et al.  Wind Power Plants: Fundamentals, Design, Construction and Operation , 2011 .

[10]  Peter Tavner,et al.  Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of a wind turbine synchronous generator drive train , 2009 .

[11]  Sung-Hoon Ahn,et al.  Practical aspects of a condition monitoring system for a wind turbine with emphasis on its design, system architecture, testing and installation , 2010 .

[12]  Andrew Kusiak,et al.  Analysis of wind turbine vibrations based on SCADA data , 2010 .

[13]  Sung-Hoon Ahn,et al.  Condition monitoring and fault detection of wind turbines and related algorithms: A review , 2009 .

[14]  Pieter Sijtsma,et al.  Nationaal Lucht-en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium National Aerospace Laboratory NLR NLR-TP-2007-798 Location and quantification of noise sources on a wind turbine , 2008 .

[15]  Simon J. Watson,et al.  Physics of Failure approach to wind turbine condition based maintenance , 2009 .

[16]  Andrew Kusiak,et al.  The prediction and diagnosis of wind turbine faults , 2011 .