Wind energy is one of the most important renewable energy sources, effectively addressing climate change issues and promoting sustainable development on a global scale. Blade failures may cause long shut-down times and may present a safety hazard. Continuous and real-time monitoring of the blade conditions is helpful for finding blade damage at an early stage and for predicting its development. Non-contact damage detection methods have the advantage of easy and flexible installation and deployment, especially for current in-service wind turbines. This thesis aims to investigate and develop a new non-contact method for wind turbine blade damage detection based on measurements of aerodynamic noise. The principle of the proposed method relies on the fact that damage to the blade may modify the boundary layer over the blade surface and the flow field around the blade, and, as a consequence, alter the noise generated aerodynamically. This noise propagates to the far-field and be measured by microphones, which could provide a remote way to detect blade damage. In this thesis, the detection of two types of damage, trailing edge crack and leading edge erosion, is experimentally investigated in the wind tunnel. The results show that the proposed aeroacoustics-based approach can effectively detect the damage mentioned above under some circumstances, which might be a promising solution complementing traditional damage detection methods in wind farms in the future.@en

In this paper, the feasibility of using far-field acoustic measurements as a non-contact monitoring technique for wind turbine blade leading edge erosion is assessed. For this purpose, a DU96 W180 airfoil with several eroded leading edge configurations of different severities is experimentally investigated. The eroded leading edges are designed with pits, gouges and coating delamination scaled from a real eroded blade. To assess the feasibility of the technique in quasi-realistic configurations, experiments are carried out under clean and turbulent inflow conditions. Acoustic measurements are performed with a phased microphone array. In the absence of inflow turbulence, because of the low Reynolds number at which the experiments are carried out, the case with minor erosion severity shows similar far-field noise spectra as the clean leading-edge cases, i.e., the presence of tonal peaks caused by laminar boundary layer instability noise through a self-sustained feedback loop but with higher tonal amplitudes. Increasing the damage level (considered as moderate erosion), the spectra of the noise scattered from the suction side show that the tonal peaks shift to higher frequencies and have lower amplitudes, thus suggesting that the damage alters the flow features responsible for the acoustic feedback loop; whereas, the spectra from the pressure side show a broadband noise distribution. For heavy erosion, the far-field noise spectra show broadband features from both airfoil sides, thus suggesting that the damage has fully forced the transition to turbulent flow; in which case, an increase in the low-frequency content is observed. Conversely, in the presence of turbulent inflow, when comparing the noise scattered at the trailing edge, no difference is found. However, leading edge impingement noise decreases at medium–high frequency compared with the baseline case at a chord-length-based Strouhal number St_C~10. The experimental results also suggest that the delamination feature is the one which is the most easily detectable and the approach is valid for a wide range of angles of attack and inflow velocity.@en

In recent years, with the development of the wind power industry and the increase in the number of wind turbines, the condition monitoring of blades and the detection of damage are increasingly important. In this work, a new non-contact damage-detection approach is experimentally investigated based on the measurement of airfoil aerodynamic noise. A NACA 0018 airfoil with chord of 200 mm with different trailing edge crack sizes, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mm, is investigated. Experiments are conducted at different mean flow velocities, inflow turbulence intensities and angles of attack. Far-field noise scattered from the airfoil is measured by means of a microphone array. The spectral differences of sound pressure level between the damaged cases and the baseline (without any damage) are compared. As expected, at small angles of attack, with clean or low turbulence intensities (e.g. ∼ 4% in the experiment) flow, by increasing the size of the crack, tonal noise appears at trailing-edge thickness-based Strouhal number,St_h , approximatively equal to 0.1. However, at higher angles of attack (e.g. ± 10° and ± 15°) or under conditions of high turbulence intensity (e.g. ∼ 7%), the amplitude of the tonal peak diminishes suggesting that complementary measurements or longer acquisition time to remove inflow turbulence effects are needed to monitor trailing edge cracks.@en

In this work, aimed at the development of an aeroacoustics-based wind turbine blade damage detection approach, the noise scattered from two airfoils with damage at the trailing edge or at the leading edge is investigated. Four trailing edge cracks (with width of 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mm) and four leading edge erosion configurations (consisting of gouges and delamination) are investigated for a NACA 0018 and a DU96 W180 airfoil. Experiments are carried out under clean and turbulent inflow conditions. Acoustic measurements are performed in an anechoic wind tunnel with a microphone array. The trailing edge crack causes a tonal peak at trailing-edge-thickness-based Strouhal number approximately equal to St_h~0.1 under clean and low turbulence intensity inflow conditions (e.g. ~4% in this study). For a higher turbulence intensity (e.g., ~7%), the tonal peaks are not detectable. For the leading edge erosion case, under clean inflow conditions and minor damage levels, the amplitudes of the harmonics in the trailing edge noise spectra increase compared with the baseline. For moderate damage levels, the harmonics on the suction side shift to higher frequencies with lower amplitudes. For the highest damage levels, only broadband characteristics are present, where low-frequency contributions increase and high-frequency contributions decrease as the damage level increases. When introducing turbulent inflow, the leading edge impingement noise level decreases at medium-high frequency (above 1000 Hz) with increasing levels of erosion.@en

Recent decades have witnessed more and more wind turbines (WTs) being installed onshore and offshore. Health condition monitoring for WTs structures and components is increasingly becoming a compelling concern for stable power output and operational safety of a wind farm [1]. Blade damages seem to occur with a higher probability ahead of other components (e.g., gearbox and generator) damages [2]. After reviewing traditional damage detection approaches and their limitations [3], in this research a new non-contactable approach to detecting trailing edge (TE) damages is proposed based on airfoil aerodynamic noise measurements using a microphone array. In the experiment, four changeable TE parts with rectangular cracks (damaged width W of 0.2mm, 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 2.0mm) for a NACA0018 airfoil (chord C=200mm, span L=400mm) are designed and an example with W=0.2mm is shown in Fig.(a). The TEs with cracks have the same solid thickness as the baseline one (h_solid=0.76mm, standard NACA0018 airfoil TE thickness with chord of 200mm) but different dimensions of total TE thickness (h=W+h_solid). A phased microphone array with 64 microphones is used for acoustic measurement then beamforming is applied to extract TE noise and source power integration is performed within a 200×200mm2 region centred at TE midpoint [4][5]. Fig.(b) shows sound pressure levels (SPLs) L_p at the integrated region of four damaged cases as well as baseline with the frequency resolution of 10Hz under the freestream velocity U of 35m/s and geometrical angle of attack (AoA) alpha of 0º. The cases with smaller cracks show less remarkable tonal peaks compared with the one of W=2.0mm (~4dB); when the crack size is smaller the spectral peak broadens. These peaks or humps are attributed to the periodic vortex shedding from blunt TEs. Fig.(c) shows the SPL differences Delta L_p between the damaged cases and baseline; frequency is normalized as TE-thickness-based Strouhal number St. Local maxima of Lp are present at approximately St = 0.1 [6]. In the experiment, it is difficult to extract the spectral peaks or humps if the effective AoA (alpha*) [6] is more than 2.40º because the boundary layer on suction side becomes thicker and the asymmetry of boundary layers prevents coherent and periodic vortex shedding [7]. In Fig.(d), the discrete points are the St at peak L_p (St_peak) versus the ratio of TE thickness and averaged displacement thickness of pressure and suction sides (overline delta *) extracted from available cases (U=15m/s, 20m/s, 25m/s, 30m/s and 35m/s); the grey and blue curves are obtained from models reported in [6] with solid angle (Psi) of 20º and 23.76º (baseline solid angle), respectively. The points of St_peak versus thickness ratio show a good agreement with the prediction model [6]. This means that particularly for smaller cracks at the first stage of damaged process, the effect of solid angle can be neglected and considered as a minor and adjunctive factor. The TE thickness retrieved through the application of the model can be used as a prediction of the damage level. Additional data obtained from experiments with turbulent inflow will be presented to assess if the approach proposed is still feasible in more realistic turbulent inflow conditions. Keywords: wind turbine blade; trailing edge crack; damage detection; aerodynamic noise. Images: Link: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static.vcongress.de/cms/forwind/paper/417dd783-7a7c-424d-a4d3- 55ce31fa41e1.png Description: (a) An example of NACA0018 airfoil with a TE crack of 0.2mm. (b) SPLs with resolution of 10Hz (U=35m/s and alpha=0º). (c) Corresponding SPL differences compared with baseline case normalized as peak St. (d) Relations of peak St and thickness ratio: discrete points are the experimental date; grey and black curves are prediction models Brooks et al. proposed with solid angle of 20º and 23.76º. References: [1] Tautz-Weinert, J. and Watson, S.J., 2016. Using SCADA data for wind turbine condition monitoring–a review. IET Renewable Power Generation, 11(4), pp.382-394. [2] Yang, W., Peng, Z., Wei, K. and Tian, W., 2016. Structural health monitoring of composite wind turbine blades: challenges, issues and potential solutions. IET Renewable Power Generation, 11(4), pp.411-416. [3] Du, Y., Zhou, S., Jing, X., Peng, Y., Wu, H. and Kwok, N., 2020. Damage detection techniques for wind turbine blades: A review. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 141, p.106445. [4] Merino-Martínez, R., Carpio, A.R., Pereira, L.T.L., van Herk, S., Avallone, F., Ragni, D. and Kotsonis, M., 2020. Aeroacoustic design and characterization of the 3D-printed, open-jet, anechoic wind tunnel of Delft University of Technology. Applied Acoustics, 170, p.107504. [5] Carpio, A.R., Avallone, F., Ragni, D., Snellen, M. and van der Zwaag, S., 2020. Quantitative criteria to design optimal permeable trailing edges for noise abatement. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 485, p.115596. [6] Brooks, T.F., Pope, D.S. and Marcolini, M.A., 1989. Airfoil self-noise and prediction. [7] Moreau, D.J. and Doolan, C.J., 2016. Tonal noise production from a wall-mounted finite airfoil. Journal of Sound and Vibration, 363, pp.199-224. @en