Optimal selection of autoregressive model coefficients for early damage detectability with an application to wind turbine blades

• Systematic optimal selection of features for enhanced damage detection.
• Selection based on sensitivity to damage outpacing statistical detection threshold.
• Application to realistic simulations of disbonding damage in wind turbine blades.

Data-driven vibration-based damage detection techniques can be competitive because of their lower instrumentation and data analysis costs. The use of autoregressive model coefficients (ARMCs) as damage sensitive features (DSFs) is one such technique. So far, like with other DSFs, either full sets of coefficients or subsets selected by trial-and-error have been used, but this can lead to suboptimal composition of multivariate DSFs and decreased damage detection performance. This study enhances the selection of ARMCs for statistical hypothesis testing for damage presence. Two approaches for systematic ARMC selection, based on either adding or eliminating the coefficients one by one or using a genetic algorithm (GA) are proposed. The methods are applied to a numerical model of an aerodynamically excited large composite wind turbine blade with disbonding damage. The GA out performs the other selection methods and enables building multivariate DSFs that markedly enhance early damage detectability and are insensitive to measurement noise.