Condition Monitoring of Wind Turbine Drivetrain Bearings

Abstract

As an extremely valuable and reliable energy source, the renewable energy is developing around the world at an unprecedented pace. By the end of 2022, the global installed capacity of offshore wind turbines is expected to reach 46.4 GW, among which 33.9 GW in Europe. Efficiencies in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) offer potential to achieve significant cost savings as it accounts for around 20%–30% of overall offshore wind farm costs. A recent study of approximately 350 offshore wind turbines indicates that gearboxes might have to be replaced as early as 6.5 years. Therefore sensing and condition monitoring (CM) systems are needed in order to obtain reliable information on the state and condition of different critical parts. The development and use of such technologies will allow companies to schedule actions at the right time. The reduced costs of O&M enable the wind energy at a competitive price thus strengthening productivity of the wind energy sector. At the academic level, a plethora of methodologies have been proposed during the last decades focusing toward early and accurate fault detection. Among others, Envelope Analysis is one of the most important methodologies, where the envelope of the vibration signal is estimated, usually after filtering around a selected frequency band excited by impacts due to the faults. Different tools, such as Kurtogram, have been proposed in order to accurately select the optimum filter parameters (center frequency and bandwidth). Cyclostationary analysis and corresponding methodologies, i.e., the cyclic spectral correlation and the cyclic spectral coherence, have been proved as powerful tools for CM. On the other hand the application, test, and evaluation of such tools in general industrial cases is still rather limited. Therefore the main aim of this paper is the application and evaluation of advanced diagnostic techniques and diagnostic indicators, including the Enhanced Envelope Spectrum and the Spectral Flatness on real-world vibration data collected from vibration sensors on gearboxes in multiple wind turbines over an extended period of time of nearly four years. The diagnostic indicators are compared with classical statistic time and frequency indicators, i.e., Kurtosis, Crest Factor, etc. and their effectiveness is evaluated based on the successful detection of two failure events.