A new oil debris sensor for online condition monitoring of wind turbine gearboxes

Online Condition Monitoring (CM) is a key technology for the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of wind turbines. Lubricating oil is the blood of the wind turbine gearbox. Metal debris in lubricating oil contains abundant information regarding the ageing and wear/damage of mechanical transmission systems. The health condition of the wind turbine gearboxes can be indicated by the quantity and size of the metal abrasive particles, which may provide very early warnings of faults/failures and benefit the condition based maintenance of the system. An improved inductive sensor probe is proposed in this paper for the online health monitoring of wind turbine gearbox. The magnetic field homogeneity as well as the performance of the proposed Helmholtz-coil probe are analyzed and verified by finite element analysis