Wind Turbine Testing and Condition Monitoring

Your goals:

• Increased efficiency in energy harvesting
• Ensured high quality
• Extended operational lifetime

Trends are going towards larger sizes of blades and rotor to gain efficiency in energy harvesting which also mean new challenges for the structures. What impact do larger blades and rotors have on the actual components as well as other parts of the structure?

Knowledge about other factors such as behavior of new materials and the impact of weather and lightning also need to be monitored and analyzed in order to ensure high quality.

Although structural health monitoring systems cannot predict the future, they can make it "measurable" and "predictable" to a certain extent.

Your goals:

• Decrease weight and complexity
• Ensure the construction techniques and materials used are optimal
• Monitor to prove long-term structural integrity during operation

The demand for lighter and more reliable structures creates a need to ensure that the tower and foundation can withstand harsh conditions on and offshore. How can you gain knowledge about how the structures behave? Are they fit for the job?

By learning more about the behavior of the structure and components, comparing measurement results and analysis of different types of structures, measurements can be a guide in the journey towards an optimized design. Data gathered can help prove the long-term structural integrity of your assets, helping with life-cycle extension projects.

Your goals:

• Increased reliability and efficiency
• Extended operational lifetime
• Improved planning for service and maintenance

As gearbox failure represent a big part of the wind turbine downtime, gaining reliability here is key. Also the efficiency plays an important part of the drive train and finding ways to increase it where measurements can help as a tool. With the help of monitoring it´s possible to keep track of the behavior and health of the components, the potential breakdowns can be detected in time and prevent damage to your structure, even possibly increase it´s operational lifetime. This also helps with better and more efficient planning for service and maintenance.