Monitoring Damage Progression in Wind Turbine Blade Under Fatigue Testing Using Acceleration Measurements

Wind energy presently meets 15% of the EU’s electricity demand, playing a crucial role in Europe’s initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. This research centers on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) during fatigue testing to ensure the safety and reliability of wind turbines, specifically focusing on their extensive fiber-reinforced composite blades. Fatigue testing entails exposing wind turbine blades to repetitive cyclic loading, replicating real-world conditions to evaluate durability and study the progression of damage. The primary objective is to analyze accelerometer data from these tests to derive damage indices that reflect the blade’s condition. This work employs two signal processing techniques, namely cross-correlations and Operational Deflection Shapes (ODS), to derive damage sensitive features that can change due to damage progression. These monitoring techniques are applied on an experimental dataset, measured for a 14.3 m composite blade with known defects introduced during manufacturing, propagating throughout the fatigue testing process.