Determination of the combined vibrational and acoustic emission signature of a wind turbine gearbox and generator shaft in service as a pre-requisite for effective condition monitoring

A review of current progress in Condition Monitoring (CM) of wind turbine gearboxes and generators is presented, as an input to the design of a new continuous CM system with automated warnings based on a combination of vibrational and Acoustic Emission (AE) analysis. For wind turbines, existing reportage on vibrational monitoring is restricted to a few case histories whilst data on AE is even scarcer. In contrast, this paper presents combined vibration and AE monitoring performed over a continuous period of 5 days on a wind turbine. The vibrational and AE signatures for a healthy wind turbine gearbox and generator were obtained as a function of wind speed and turbine power, for the full normal range of these operational variables. i.e. 5–25 m/s and 0–300 kW respectively. The signatures have been determined as a vital pre-requisite for the identification of abnormal signatures attributable to shaft and gearbox defects. Worst-case standard deviations have been calculated for the sensor data. These standard deviations determine the minimum defect signal that could be detected within the defined time interval without false alarms in an automated warning system.

► We reviewed the condition monitoring (CM) of wind turbine gearboxes and generators.
► We defined automated CM based on a combination of vibrational and AE analysis.
► Wind speed and turbine power are used to correlate the sensor measurements.
► We defined signatures for a healthy turbine gearbox and generator.
► We investigated the minimum POD to detect defects without raising false alarms.