Structural health monitoring of wind turbine blade using piezoceremic based active sensing and impedance sensing

Wind energy has recently risen to the forefront of green, sustainable energy. The structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades are important for optimal operational safety and costs. In this paper, the piezoceramic based active sensing method and impedance method were proposed and applied for the monitoring of wind turbine blades. A tensile test on a customized blade specimen and a destructive test on commercial full blade were performed to simulate the damage process. Piezoceramic patches were mounted on the surface to monitor the damage process. Wavelet packet analysis was used to build the energy vector for the propagated wave during active sensing. Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) based damage index were built for both approaches. Results indicate that both methods were able to detect and locate damage on wind turbine blades.