Condition Monitoring Using Digital Fault-Detection Approach for Pitch System in Wind Turbines

Abstract

The monitoring of wind turbine (WT) systems allows operators to maximize their performance, consequently minimizing untimely shutdowns and related hazard situations while maximizing their efficiency. Indeed, the rational monitoring of WT ensures the identification of the main sources of risks at a proper time, such as internal or external failures, hence leading to an increase in their prevention by limiting the faults’ occurrence regarding the different components of wind turbines, achieving production objectives. In this context, the present paper develops a practical monitoring approach using a numerical fault-detection process for the pitch system based on a benchmark wind turbine (WT) model with the main aim of improving safety and security performance. Therefore, the proposed fault-diagnosis procedure deals with eventual faults occurring in the actuators and sensors of the pitch system. In this proposed approach, a simple, logical process is used to generate the correct residuals as fault information based on the redundancy in the actuators and sensors of the pitch sub-systems. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed process for ensuring the tasks of the fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of the WT systems, and it can be a promising approach for avoiding major damage in such systems, leading to their operational stability and improved reliability and availability.

Keywords

• fault detection
• external and internal residuals
• condition-based monitoring
• wind turbine
• benchmark model
• pitch system