Wind Turbine Vibrations Project

[steeno]

Hello Mech/Acou/vib people

I am defining a project in Digital Signal Processing.
My theme is vibration in Wind turbines. I am looking
to all sides for

- books
- articles
- web sites

All inputs are of interest.

My level: I have the following mechanical items:
Fundament with tower. Mill hat. Wings.

In the hat: Main shaft, gear, generator.

There are two main purposes with the study:
1. Short Time Measurement of vibration. Alarm levels
for resonant frequencies.

2. Long Time Measurement. Wear on rotating parts.

I have during 2001 developed a DSP programme that can
FFT analyse the measurements of up to 8 accelerometers
placed various strategic places in the wind turbine.

The aim of this years project is to extract vibration data
and to feed data into a decision making program.

Feel free to comment !

 

[SoCal]

8ptbuck,

You make some valid points.

What Brand/Model test equipment are you using? What is the most common mode of failure that you are seeing in the gearboxes? Are you working on all types of turbines or just the V80s?

Thanks,

Dave

 

[8ptbuck]

Dave
I will not mention make and models of turbines because of confidentiality issues with certain customers. This is a very small industry as far as suppliers go. If you are involved in this industry then you will understand. I am monitoring one certain model at one site that goes through gearboxes by the truck load. I have also set-up a database for another customer who form what I can tell is going to lose 100 drives. Not bad considering these units are less than one year old. I am presently working on three other models that use four different gearbox manufacturers and generator manufacturers. Most failures appear to originate from intermediate bearings to high speed side brgs. Generator brgs are also replaced by the gross. I do not sell equipment or make commissions on it. I have used IRD, Entek,CSI etc. The equipment I now use for all testing is the CMVA60 single channel, and for ODS I use the CMVA40 two channel. The ODS can be done with the 60 if you are just looking at the animations for how the unit moves. Anyone monitoring wind turbines using only acoustic emission or sound wave analysis is missing a lot and is in for a big surprise, there is a lot more going on here than just high frequency noise.
Dave if I may ask what is your background and experience with wind turbines? If you'd like you can contact me @
nevibes@aol.com

Thanks