Development and testing of wavelet packet transform-based detector for ice accretion on wind turbines

This paper introduces a novel method for detecting ice accumulation on wind turbines. The proposed detection method is based on utilizing a multi-resolution analysis to extract specific frequency components present in the direct and quadrature components of the electric current flowing out of a wind generator. The basis of the proposed method lies in the fact that ice accumulation leads to a slow increase in the mass of the wind turbine, which demands higher electromagnetic torque to overcome the iced rotor and blades at each wind speed. The Daubechies db6 basis functions are used to construct the desired multi-resolution analysis for analyzing the current signals. The proposed method has been implemented for simulation tests using MAT-LAB/SIMULINK software. Simulation results show that the proposed method can detect ice accumulation, related vibrations and electromagnetic torque pulsations independent from any pre-defined geometry.