Damage assessment of small-scale wind turbine blade using piezoelectric sensors

Abstract

Real-time structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are applied many fields. Recently, the interest about wind energy was increased by the demand of clean energy in the world and many researches were actively performed for applying SHM technology to wind turbine systems. Piezoelectric sensor is one kind of sensor which is widely used for SHM system to assess damage creation. In this paper, the small scale wind turbine blade was fabricated and health monitoring of the blade was performed using the piezoelectric sensor. The quasi-static bending test of the blade was carried out and the PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) sensors, which are polymer type piezoelectric materials, were used for health monitoring. Two-cycle test was performed; the load was applied during 350 sec and removed at the first cycle, and load was applied again until the blade was broken completely at the second cycle. The voltage of PVDF sensors were measured during the quasi-static bending test in order to find out the moment when the damage occurrence started. The voltage of the sensor critically changed at the moment of damage occurred.