Investigation of Various Condition-Monitoring Techniques Based on a Damaged Wind Turbine Gearbox

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory presented an investigation of various wind turbine drivetrain condition monitoring (CM) techniques at the 7 International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring held in 2009. The study contained in this report is a continuation of the 2009 paper and focuses on results obtained by various CM techniques from a damaged Gearbox Reliability Collaborative test gearbox. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of each technique. In order to provide the audience a relatively complete picture, a brief discussion of CM system implementation is provided first. The dynamometer test setup, along with some failure information on the damaged gearbox obtained during its disassembly, is presented next, followed by the CM results obtained during the retest of the damaged gearbox. For comparison and discussion purposes, earlier results obtained from a test gearbox under healthy condition will also be included. Finally, the paper will conclude with some observations obtained during the tests.