ACOUSTIC
EMISSION & NDT SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
Real-Time Evaluation Of Wind Turbine Blades With Acoustic
Emission Monitoring During Certification Tests
NDT.net – September 2002, Vol. 7 No. 09:
http://www.ndt.net/v07n09.htm
A.
A. Anastasopoulos, D. A. Kouroussis, A. G. Dutton, M. J. Blanch,
P. Vionis, D. J. Lekou, D R V van Delft, P. A. Joosse, A. Proust,
T. P. Philippidis, T Kossivas, G Fernando
Within the
scopes of a current EC-funded research project, Acoustic
Emission (AE) monitoring has been extensively applied during
laboratory testing of various Wind Turbine Blades. Baseline
testing (both fatigue and static) of small-scale blades to
failure, including several load-and-hold periods at intermediate
stages prior to failure, has enabled the development of a fast
and effective “grading” system (from “good” to “severely
damaged”), based on the amount of critical Acoustic Emission
hits appearing during the hold periods. Such hits are identified
and sorted out automatically, after each period, using trained
Supervised Pattern Recognition algorithms on the acquired AE
data, incorporated into specially developed (within the scopes
of the Project) software, while, furthermore, the blade is
graded using the software’s predefined grading criteria. The
whole procedure is applied on load-hold data, at anytime
in-between testing stages and is evaluated during testing of
large, commercial scale blades. Ultimately, the grading
technique will, also, be applied for the evaluation of installed
blades, with proof tests and on-site monitoring.