Vibration response of a 2.3 MW wind turbine to yaw motion and shut down events

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is a process of implementing a damage detection strategy for a mechanical system. Wind turbine machinery stands to benefit from SHM significantly as the ability to detect early stages of damage before significant malfunction or structural failure occurs would reduce costs of wind power projects by reducing maintenance costs. Vibration analysis of dynamic structural response is an approach to SHM that has been successfully applied to mechanical and civil systems and shows some promise for wind turbine application. Traditionally, a setback to turbine vibration-based SHM techniques has been the unavailability of turbine vibration response data. This study begins to address this issue by presenting vibration response for a commercial 2.3 MW turbine to a limited number of operating conditions. A database of acquired vibration response signals detailing turbine response to yaw motion, start-up, operation and shutdown has been assembled. A Daubechies sixth-order wavelet was used to perform an eight-level discrete wavelet decomposition such that general trends and patterns within the signals could be identified. With further development, the presented analysis of vibration response may be integrated into routines to reduce downtime and failure frequency of utility scale wind turbines. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd