Open science: Dataset on radar-based structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades is shared on ZENODO

The dataset contains radar-based measurements of rotor blades from three operational wind turbines as part of a structural health monitoring system. For this purpose, a sensor box with a 35 GHz radar sensor (about 1 000 measurements per second) and a camera system (about 100 images per second), is mounted on each wind turbine tower at approximately 100 m height. In order to distinguish individual rotor blades, a machine-readable marker printed on a self-adhesive film was applied on the blade’s surface. When a rotor blade passes the sensor, the camera captures an image of the marker while the radar records a measurement. The marker is then identified and the recorded data is assigned to a particular rotor blade. The measurements demonstrate that the damage detection methodology can be transferred to an image processing problem. The challenge is to manage the strong influence from variable environmental and operational conditions, e.g. wind speed, azimuth orientation, that modify the rotor blade appearance in the radargram significantly. The dataset contains measurements from the intact turbine blade conditions, because it was not possible to introduce structural damage.

Link: https://zenodo.org/record/8366654

Acknowledgement: The financial support of this research by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (grant number: 03EE2035A) is gratefully acknowledged.