Analysis of Time Domain Active Sensing Data from CX-100 Wind Turbine Blade Fatigue Tests for Damage Assessment

This paper presents the results obtained using time-series-based methods for structural damage assessment. The methods are applied to a wind turbine blade structure subjected to fatigue loads. A 9 m CX-100 (carbon experimental 100 kW) blade is harmonically excited at its first natural frequency to introduce a failure mode. Consequently, a through-thickness fatigue crack is visually identified at 8.5 million cycles. The time domain data from the piezoelectric active-sensing techniques are measured during the fatigue loadings and used to detect incipient damage. The damage-sensitive features, such as the first four moments and a normality indicator, are extracted from the time domain data. Time series autoregressive models with exogenous inputs are also implemented. These features could efficiently detect a fatigue crack and are less sensitive to operational variations than the other methods.