Condition Monitoring of Wind Turbine Drive-Trains via Non-Contact Acoustic Sensors
Acronym: CMDrive
Funding body: Innovate UK
Status: Project
There is an increasing trend in the wind power sector for Wind Farm Owners (WFOs) to in‐source their own Wind Turbine Conditioning Monitoring Systems (WTCMS). This choice comes with a number of issues with current Condition Monitoring (CM) solutions (e.g.: Vibrational Analysis and Acoustic Emission), primarily: a) the system sensors are intrusive, and thus present difficulties during the installation process; such tampering also revokes the initial OEM warranty of the drive‐train components, b) CM systems are often calibrated according to the manufacturer’s machinery, and hence are not specific enough to the WFO’s turbines; c) The European wind turbine standard EN 50308 is currently being updated3, in order to stress on the development and implementation of techniques/technologies which can ensure turbine reliability, both onshore and offshore and d) Current ISO standards for condition monitoring (such as ISO 17359:2011) are established for the diagnosis of machinery, and are not specific enough to wind turbine drive‐train components.