Patent Description:
In recent years, with the improvement of environmental protection awareness and the policy support of various countries, the field of clean energy has shown a rapid development trend. As a new type of energy, clean energy has the advantages of wide distribution, renewable energy and less environmental pollution compared with traditional fossil fuels. As a representative of clean energy, the application of wind turbines is increasing day by day.

Wind turbine blade is an important component for wind turbine to capture wind energy, and its normal operation is directly related to equipment safety and power generation efficiency. The proper operation of blades and even wind turbines depend on the tight connection of root fasteners such as root bolts. Blade root fastener is an important component for connecting blades to hubs. If the blade root fastener is broken or loosened, it will affect the operating attitude of the blade and reduce the power generation efficiency; in severe cases, it will cause major safety accidents such as blade hitting tower or falling off. Therefore, monitoring the health state of blade root fasteners is of great significance for the efficient and safe operation of wind turbines.

At present, the following schemes are mainly used to monitor the health state of the blade root fastener:.

From the limitations of the above schemes, it can be known that there is currently a need for a simpler and more efficient blade root fastener monitoring scheme.

Document <CIT> relates to a method for monitoring the vibrational state of a wind turbine comprising detecting a plurality of acceleration values that represent accelerations wherein a component of the wind turbine is subject to at different respective points in time within a specified time interval, storing the acceleration values in an acceleration data set; generating a sum frequency distribution on the basis of the acceleration data set, comparing a first sum frequency value of the sum frequency distribution with a second sum frequency value of a threshold sum frequency distribution for at least one acceleration value, and outputting a warning signal if the second sum frequency value is greater than the first sum frequency value.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and system for monitoring the health state of the blade root fastener, by means of which the method and/or the system can determine the health state of the blade root fastener with low cost and high accuracy, thereby improving the operating efficiency and operating safety of the wind turbine.

In a first aspect of the present invention, this object is solved by a method for monitoring health state of blade root fastener according to claim <NUM>, the method comprising the following steps:.

In the context of the present invention, the term "lateral vibration of the nacelle" refers to vibration of the nacelle of the wind turbine in the lateral direction perpendicular or transverse to the vertical direction (for example, at an angle of <NUM>° to <NUM>° to the vertical direction). The term "rotational speed of the rotor" refers to the rotational speed of the rotor of the wind turbine consisting of the blades and the hub. The term "<NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor" refers to twice of the frequency in Hertz (i.e., times per second) converted from the rotational speed of the rotor (for example, the rotational speed of the rotor in cycles/minute is converted to the rotational speed of the rotor in cycles/second and multiplied by <NUM> times to get the <NUM>-time-frequency of the rotational speed of the rotor). The term "sequence of signals" refers to a set of values collected at multiple points of time for the signal.

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises the following steps:
filtering the amplitude based on historical amplitude data to remove the influence of abnormal data.

Through this extended embodiment, abnormal data and its influence can be eliminated, thereby improving the monitoring accuracy. For example, a filter can be used to filter out points of abnormal frequency or abnormal amplitude. An abnormal data may be defined as, for example, a difference from a historical average value or a statistical value under a specific condition (such as a specific wind speed) that exceeds, for example, a predetermined threshold, such as <NUM>%, <NUM>%, <NUM>%, etc..

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, analyzing the sequence of acceleration signals and the sequence of rotational speed signals to determine the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor comprises the following steps:.

Through this preferred embodiment, the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor can be determined accurately and quickly. Herein, by performing the transformation from the time domain to the angular domain and performing the fast Fourier transform on the angular domain signal, the frequency spectrum signal of the vibration of the nacelle can be easily obtained, and thus the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the wind rotor can be quickly obtained.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises the following steps:.

Through this preferred embodiment, the background noise can be reduced or eliminated, or the precision of the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor can be improved. Elimination of background noise can be achieved, for example, by passing the fast Fourier transformed signal through a filter with a suitable cut-off frequency, such as a bandpass filter.

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, the blade root fastener comprises one or more of the following: the blade root bolt, the blade root nut, the blade root screw, and the blade root adhesion portion. With this extended embodiment, various blade root fasteners can be detected at low cost and accurately, thereby improving the operational safety of the wind turbine.

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises the following steps:
sending the alarm signal remotely to the user mobile device.

Through this extended embodiment, remote monitoring of blade root fasteners can be realized. For example, a user may install a monitoring application software App on the user's mobile device, which can remotely communicate with the wind turbine (also referred to as "wind power plant") in real time, so that the user can view the health state of the blade root fasteners in real time.

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, determining the health state of the blade root fastener based on the amplitude comprises the following steps:.

Through this extended embodiment, different countermeasures can be taken according to different fault conditions. For example, when the amplitude exceeds the first threshold but is lower than the second threshold, it means that the falling off or breaking of the bolt does not seriously affect the safety of the wind turbine, such as only one or non-critical bolt falls off or breaks; and when the amplitude exceeds the second threshold, which indicates that multiple or critical bolts have fallen off or broken, which requires immediate shutdown to prevent a safety accident. The second threshold is greater than the first threshold, and the two thresholds may be set according to statistical or empirical data.

In a second aspect of the present invention, the foregoing object is solved by a system for monitoring health state of blade root fastener according to claim <NUM>, the system comprises:.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the sensor is a PCH acceleration sensor. Through this preferred embodiment, the measurement of both acceleration and rotational speed can be conveniently achieved through the same PCH acceleration sensor. At the same time, since the PCH acceleration sensor is installed in most wind turbines, this embodiment can realize the measurement of acceleration and rotation speed without or with very little additional hardware cost.

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, the system further comprises:.

With this expansion, emergency handling of fault conditions can be realized, such as adjusting the blade attitude by pitch operation, or decelerating or stopping the rotor to avoid accidents; alternatively, remote communication can be implemented so that, for example, the user can be notified remotely. The remote communication module can implement long-distance communication by, for example, a Bluetooth connection, a Wi-Fi connection, a cellular connection, etc. Laser communication or satellite communication are also conceivable. The user mobile device may be, for example, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a smartphone, etc..

In an extended embodiment of the present invention, the health state comprises one or more of the following:.

With this extended embodiment, various fastener failure situations can be detected. Other fastener failure conditions are also conceivable under the teachings of the present invention, such as excessive fastener wear, etc..

Furthermore, the invention also relates to a wind turbine with the system according to the invention.

The present invention has at least the following beneficial effects: (<NUM>) Through the present invention, it is possible to accurately determine whether a failure of the blade root fastener occurs, which is based on the following insight of the inventor: the inventor found through research that failures such as breaking and loosening of the blade root fastener will cause abnormal changes in blade attitude, such as a reduction in the natural vibration frequency of the blade, which in turn will lead to lateral vibration of the nacelle. Not only that, the inventors have also discovered the specificity of this lateral vibration, specifically, the various lateral vibrations of the nacelle are not all associated with the failure of the blade root fasteners, only the vibration of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor has a strong correlation with the failure of the blade root fastener. That is to say, the frequency of the lateral vibration of the nacelle caused by the failure of the blade root fastener is exactly the same as twice the frequency of the rotational speed of the rotor. Therefore, by detecting the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor, it can be accurately judged whether the failure of the blade root fastener has occurred. (<NUM>) Compared with the prior art, the present invention has the features of simpler calculation, lower hardware cost, more practicability, etc. This is because the present invention only needs to detect acceleration and rotational speed, which can be realized by PCH acceleration, and the calculation process is simple, so the software and hardware of the present invention are low in cost, simple in operation, and strong in practicability.

The present invention is further described below with reference to the accompanying drawings in conjunction with specific embodiments.

It should be noted that various components in the various figures may be shown exaggerated for illustration purposes and not necessarily to correct scale. In the various figures, identical or functionally identical components are provided with the same reference numerals.

In the present invention, unless otherwise specified, "arranged on," "arranged over," and "arranged over" do not exclude the case where there is an intermediate between the two. In addition, "arranged on or above" only means the relative positional relationship between two components, and in certain circumstances, such as after reversing the product direction, it can also be converted to "arranged under or below", and vice versa.

In the present invention, each embodiment is only intended to illustrate the solution of the present invention, and should not be construed as limiting.

In the present invention, unless otherwise specified, the quantifiers "a" and "an" do not exclude the scenario of multiple elements.

It should also be pointed out here that, in the embodiments of the present invention, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, only a part of the components or assemblies may be shown, but those of ordinary skill in the art can understand that, under the teaching of the present invention, required parts or components may be added according to specific scenarios.

It should also be pointed out that within the scope of the present invention, the terms "same", "equal" and "equal to" do not mean that the two values are absolutely equal, but allow a certain reasonable error, that is, the phrases also encompass "substantially the same", "substantially equal", "substantially equal to". By analogy, in the present invention, the terms "perpendicular to", "parallel to" and the like in the table direction also encompass the meanings of "substantially perpendicular to" and "substantially parallel to".

In addition, the numbering of the steps of each method of the present invention does not limit the execution order of the method steps. Unless otherwise indicated, the various method steps may be performed in a different order.

In the present invention, the controller may be implemented in software, hardware or firmware or a combination thereof. A controller can exist alone or be part of a component. For example, the controller may be implemented as a discrete hardware module in the wind turbine or as part of the pitch system; or the controller may be implemented as software, such as a software module of a control system of the pitch system or on a local computer or remote server or user mobile device application App.

In view of the limitations of the existing blade root fastener monitoring scheme, such as high monitoring complexity, high hardware cost, and low detection accuracy, the present invention provides a novel method and system for monitoring the health state of the blade root fastener, which can determine the health state of the blade root fastener with low cost and high accuracy, thereby increasing the operating efficiency and operating safety of the wind turbine. In particular, the idea on which the present invention is based is that, the inventor found through research that failures such as breaking and loosening of the blade root fastener will cause abnormal changes in blade attitude, such as a reduction in the natural vibration frequency of the blade, which in turn will lead to lateral vibration of the nacelle. Not only that, the inventors have also discovered the specificity of this lateral vibration, specifically, the various lateral vibrations of the nacelle are not all associated with the failure of the blade root fasteners, only the vibration of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor has a strong correlation with the failure of the blade root fastener. That is to say, the frequency of the lateral vibration of the nacelle caused by the failure of the blade root fastener is exactly the same as the <NUM>-time-frequency of the rotational speed of the rotor. Therefore, by detecting the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor, it can be accurately judged whether the failure of the blade root fastener has occurred. In addition, the present invention only needs to detect acceleration and rotational speed, and the calculation solution is simple, so the hardware and software costs of the fastener failure detection solution can be better reduced. For example, the present invention can use the PCH sensor that will be installed in the wind turbine, does not need to install additional hardware sensors, has low cost and good versatility. In addition, the solution of the present invention can be installed in the programmable logic circuit PLC of the wind turbine in the form of a software APP to perform stand-alone off-line operation to realize full-time monitoring. Once a fault warning is triggered, the wind turbine will automatically stop for protection. The invention has strict theoretical support behind it, and has a clear directionality for the fracture of the blade root bolt.

<FIG> shows a schematic diagram of a system <NUM> according to the invention.

First, an exemplary operating environment for the system <NUM> is set forth. In this embodiment, the system <NUM> for monitoring the health state of the blade root fastener (or simply "system <NUM>") determines the health state of the blade root fastener through data measurement or data acquisition and data processing, and sends the health state remotely to the user mobile device <NUM> through the optional relay device <NUM> and the optional network <NUM>, and then the user can view the health state remotely, for example, on the monitoring application <NUM> installed on the user mobile device <NUM> , and performs remote operations such as blade attitude adjustment or shutdown if necessary. The relay device <NUM> may be, for example, an infrared receiver, a Wi-Fi router, a base station, a communication satellite, etc. The network <NUM> may be the Internet or an Intranet or other private network. In a preferred embodiment, the system <NUM> communicates directly with the user mobile device <NUM> or other control terminal, in this case, the system <NUM> has a transmitter of corresponding power so that the health state signal can be received by the user mobile device <NUM> or other control terminal. In a preferred embodiment, a remote server <NUM> is also provided for authentication of the system <NUM> and historical data storage. For example, the user must first enter the correct user credentials into the remote server <NUM> to access the system <NUM> (for example, by means of a monitoring application <NUM> installed on the user mobile device <NUM>), thereby obtaining the corresponding health state. The remote server <NUM> may also store historical health state of the system <NUM> for statistical or related threshold determination. Additionally, the remote server <NUM> can also encrypt and decrypt data between the system <NUM> and the user mobile device <NUM>, thereby increasing security.

In the present invention, the blade root fastener should be understood broadly. For example, the blade root encompasses various fastening devices for connecting blade roots and bolts, such as blade root bolts, blade root nuts, blade root screws, and blade root adhesion parts, etc. Failures such as breakage and loosening of these blade root fasteners will lead to changes in the blade attitude and even lead to safety accidents of the wind turbine.

Further details of the system <NUM> are set forth next.

As shown in <FIG>, the system <NUM> for monitoring the health state of the blade root fastener according to the present invention includes the following components (some of these components are optional):.

The controller <NUM> may be implemented as a discrete hardware module in the wind turbine or as part of the pitch system; the controller <NUM> may be implemented as software, such as a software module of a control system of the pitch system, or a local computer or a remote server or an application program on a user mobile device, etc. In the case of hardware implementation, the controller <NUM> may include, for example, a field programmable logic gate array FPGA, an application specific integrated circuit ASIC, a special purpose processor, etc. In the case of a software implementation, the controller <NUM> may be implemented as software code stored on a memory, which may be executed by a dedicated or general-purpose processor to perform the described steps.

The present invention has at least the following beneficial effects: (<NUM>) Through the present invention, it is possible to accurately determine whether the failure of the blade root fastener occurs, which is based on the following insight of the inventor: the inventor found through research that failures such as breaking and loosening of the blade root fastener will cause abnormal changes in blade attitude, such as a reduction in the natural vibration frequency of the blade, which in turn will lead to lateral vibration of the nacelle. Not only that, the inventors have also discovered the specificity of this lateral vibration, specifically, the various lateral vibrations of the nacelle are not all associated with the failure of the blade root fasteners, only the vibration of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor has a strong correlation with the failure of the blade root fastener. That is to say, the frequency of the lateral vibration of the nacelle caused by the failure of the blade root fastener is exactly the same as the frequency at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor. Therefore, by detecting the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor, it can be accurately judged whether the failure of the blade root fastener has occurred. (<NUM>) Compared with the prior art, the present invention has the characteristics of simpler calculation, lower hardware cost, more practicability, etc. This is because the present invention only needs to detect acceleration and rotational speed, which can be realized by PCH acceleration, and the calculation process is simple, so the software and hardware of the present invention are low in cost, simple in operation, and strong in practicability.

<FIG> shows the flow of a method <NUM> according to the present invention, wherein the dashed boxes represent optional steps.

In step <NUM>, obtained is the sequence of acceleration signals representing the lateral vibration of the nacelle and the sequence of rotational speed signals representing the rotational speed of the rotor.

In optional step <NUM>, the amplitude is filtered based on historical amplitude data to remove the effects of abnormal data.

In step <NUM>, the sequence of acceleration signals and the sequence of rotational speed signals are analyzed to determine the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor.

In optional step <NUM>, the amplitude corresponding to <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor is corrected according to the frequency and/or weight of the tower and the frequency and/or weight of the blade.

In step <NUM>, the health state of the blade root fastener is determined based on the amplitude.

<FIG> shows an example of a monitoring process according to the present invention.

Curves <NUM>-<NUM> represent the rotational speed of the rotor, the lateral acceleration of the nacelle, the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequncy of the rotational speed of the rotor, and the alarm signal level, respectively. In this example, at point of time <NUM>, the system <NUM> detects through curves <NUM>-<NUM> that one or more bolt breaks have occurred, and automatically performs shutdown protection. At the same time, an early warning message is sent to the station, prompting the operation and maintenance personnel to perform maintenance.

Claim 1:
A method for monitoring health state of a wind turbine blade root fastener, comprising the following steps:
obtaining (<NUM>) a sequence of acceleration signals representing the lateral vibration of a nacelle of a wind turbine referring to vibration of the nacelle of the wind turbine in the lateral direction perpendicular or transverse to the vertical direction and a sequence of rotational speed signals representing a rotational speed of the rotor;
analyzing (<NUM>) the sequence of acceleration signals and the sequence of rotational speed signals to determine the amplitude of the nacelle at <NUM>-time-frequency of the rotational speed of the rotor referring to twice of the frequency in Hertz converted from the rotational speed of the rotor; and
determining (<NUM>) the health state of the blade root fastener based on the amplitude.