Modal Passport Concept for Wind Turbine Blades Monitoring and Diagnostics

One of the most sensitive parts of a wind turbine to environmental influences are the rotating blades. Today there are many technologies available to assess its condition, but they all need to be developed to become more cost-effective and more sensitive to fault detection. The Modal Passport algorithms and methods discussed in this paper proposes the technique already used for helicopter blade condition monitoring and diagnostics. This technique requires adaptation to wind turbine blades because they have larger dimensions, material and design, and operate under other conditions. To provide this adaptation, computational and experimental data on the modal properties of the blades must be obtained. The study is planned to be performed for a scale model on stationary and rotating test rigs. The algorithms and methods of the Modal passport considered in this study stage were used to form a roadmap for developing the passport for a series of composite models of a wind turbine blade. The stages of the Modal passport development include FE modeling of the blade model and calculation of modal parameters. Estimated volume of modal tests made it possible to plan the step-by-step execution of the roadmap works for development and experimental application of the modal passport of wind turbine blade models.