A New Approach for Fault Detection, Location and Diagnosis by Ultrasonic Testing
Fausto Pedro Garcı́a Márquez, Carlos Quiterio Gómez Muñoz
Abstract
Wind turbine blades are constantly submitted to different types of particles such as dirt, ice, etc., as well as all the different environmental parameters that affect the behaviour and efficiency of the energy generation system. These parameters can cause faults to the wind turbine blades, modifying their behaviour due, for example, to the turbulence. A new method is presented in this paper based on cross-correlations to determine the presence of delamination in the blades. The experiments were conducted in two real wind turbine blades to analyse the fault and non-fault blades using ultrasonic guided waves. Finally, the energy analysis of the signal based on wavelet transforms allowed to determine energies abrupt changes in the correlation of the signals and to locate the faults.