Developing and testing a load and strain monitoring system for a wind turbine blade

Albadri, Dawood Hamed (2018) Developing and testing a load and strain monitoring system for a wind turbine blade. Honours thesis, Murdoch University.

Abstract

This report demonstrates the main reasons behind using monitoring systems on each blade of the wind turbine system and will also exhibit the implementation of the monitoring systems in terms of software simulation and practical simulation. It is noticeable that since the blades are located on a high altitude, it can cause them to face wind turbulence and intermittent wind, which of course will lead the blades to face a fatigue within years of operating and that will subsequently lead to their deterioration.

There were five experiments conducted in this project. The first experiment was about testing load cell by applying loads in load cell and check the calibration factor in Arduino Software Program. The findings were that to get the correct load readings in Arduino serial monitor matching with the applied load in load cell, the calibration factor need to be adjusted, either increasing or decreasing. Second experiment was performed to compare the results between shunt resistor simulation of the load cell and shunt resistor simulation in circuit maker software and it found that the load cell has very tiny linearity error which is 0.017% of Full Scale Output (FSO) and the line graphs are approximately matching. Shunt resistor simulation was implemented in third experiment to simulate strain applied to wind turbine blade using a quarter Wheatstone bridge circuit and the results shows that the more the load applied to the blade or an object the more the strain will be achieved in tension or compression. The Arduino serial monitor was displaying the readings as a load in Kg, and the equivalent strain was calculated. The fourth experiment was implemented to measure strain using a half Wheatstone bridge circuit configuration and the results shows that the linearity error is less compared to the quarter bridge configuration. Finally, fifth experiment was about using a buzzer as alarming system and it was programmed in Arduino in such way that when a certain load to the blade is exceeded, the buzzer alarm was initiated.

There are many calculations in this report linked with theory and practical experiments, to approve the results obtained.

Item Type:	Thesis (Honours)
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Engineering and Information Technology
Supervisor(s):	Whale, Jonathan
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/44783

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