Wavelet Transformation for Damage Identification in Wind Turbine Blades

The present paper documents a proposed modal and wavelet analysis-based structural health monitoring (SHM) method for damage identification in wind turbine blades. A finite element (FE) model of a full-scale wind turbine blade is developed and introduced to a transverse surface crack. Hereby, post-damage mode shapes are derived through modal analysis and subsequently analyzed with continuous two-dimensional wavelet transformation for damage identification, namely detection, localization and assessment. It is found that valid damage identification is obtained even when utilizing the mode shape of the first structural blade mode. However, due to the nature of the proposed method, it is also found that the accuracy of the damage assessment highly depends on the number of employed measurement points.