Synchronous Analysis in Wind Turbine Gearbox Condition Monitoring

This paper summarizes the application of “synchronous sampling” technique in the digital domain to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio in detection of wind turbine gear and bearing damage signatures. In this technique, only a once-per-revolution Key Phaser or a low-count Encoder signal is required. High-count synchronous sampling is achieved by resampling in the digital domain. Implementation and demonstration of the aforementioned techniques are illustrated in two current wind turbine field operation examples. The improvement in the accuracy and precision of damage feature extractions is demonstrated.