The Application of Helicopter Health and Usage Monitoring Techniques within the Wind Turbine Industry

Cost-optimised maintenance of wind turbines is becoming increasingly important due to the remote location and access limitations of offshore wind farms. Maintenance and repair costs increase significantly due to the specialist vessels required and delays due to unfavourable weather conditions. Significant cost reductions can be achieved by making better use of condition monitoring information to make more efficient and effective maintenance decisions. Replacement parts and specialist access equipment can be ordered in advance, reducing downtime. Work can be scheduled at a time when the wind speed is predicted to be low, minimising production losses. The key innovation described in this paper is the transfer of condition monitoring technologies and maintenance models from the aerospace industry to the wind turbine industry. New health and usage monitoring techniques have been developed, which are intended to enable predictive maintenance and extend component life through the use of advanced maintenance protocols. The ability of the new algorithms to identify real-time features has been demonstrated using recordings of wind turbine drive train vibration and bearing seeded fault testing.