This week: OneProd talks online vibration monitoring

Advanced methods for online vibration monitoring of wind turbines

Environmental and technological characteristics of wind turbines, along with the importance of risks* incurred in case of serious damage to one of the rotating elements, justify the use of online vibration monitoring, along with adequate diagnosis techniques for these machines.

Due to the complexity of the dynamics of a wind turbine and its operating mode standard monitoring methods are not suitable. In particular trending requires perfectly stable and repetitive operating conditions which are not the case regarding wind turbine operaton.

01dB-Metravib offers an innovating monitoring technique based on pulse phenomenon to detect bearing wear and tooth cracking. This technique, which has already been implemented successfully on mechanical elements with similar characteristics, is particularly suited for rotating machines operating at very low speed.

* Risk may be defined as the product of the probability of occurrence of a defect by (direct and indirect) costs, of which it is the cause: production losses, repair costs, etc.