Initial Results for In-situ Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades using an FMCW Radar Network at 60GHz

Abstract

The continuous increase in the number of wind turbines is one of the major innovations of the 21st century worldwide for generating renewable energy and simul taneously reducing greenhouse gases. Since maintenance by mechanics only takes place at intervals without continuous monitoring and is associated with high profit losses due to shutdowns, intelligent sensors and algorithms are used to monitor the entire structure, in particular wind turbine blades (WTBs). The field study by Maelzer et al. [1] and the fatigue test in the laboratory by Simon et al. [2] have shown that a radar-based approach in the millimeter-wave frequency range for structural health monitoring of WTBs is promising. This work describes the overall system design of a radar-based SHM system and its field deployment in a wind turbine. For this purpose, four sensor boxes are mounted on the main web of two rotor blades of a wind turbine. Each sensor box contains a frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar at 60GHz and an acceleration sensor. Furthermore, one control unit per blade is mounted in the hub. Eachsensor box is connected to the corresponding control unit using the Power over Dataline standard for independent communication [3]. One of the three control units is connected to the mobile network for data transfer. A reference damage model developed by Rao et al. [4] and previously implemented on a WTB segment is applied here to simulate an artificial delamination. Initial measurement results are presented taking the changing environmental and operational conditions of the wind turbine into account. References [1] MORITZ MÄLZER, SEBASTIAN BECK, SERCAN ALIPEK, ELIAS REICHART, JOCHEN MOLL, VIKTOR KROZER, CHRISTOS OIKONOMOPOULOS, JÜRGEN KASSNER, MANFREDHÄGELEN,THOMASHEINECKE,etal. Radar-based struc tural monitoring of wind turbines blades: Field results from two operational wind tur bines. STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING 2023, 2023. [2] Jonas Simon, Thomas Kurin, Jochen Moll, Oliver Bagemiel, Raphael Wedel, Stefan Krause, Fabian Lurz, Andreas Nuber, Vadim Issakov, and Viktor Krozer. Embedded radar networks for damage detection in wind turbine blades: Validation in a full-scale fatigue test. Structural Health Monitoring, 22(6):4252–4263, 2023. [3] Tobias Huemmer, Thomas Kurin, Moritz Maelzer, Katharina Fiedler, Sebastian Beck, Jochen Moll, and Fabian Lurz. System architecture of a radar-based structural health monitoring system for wind turbine blades using power over dataline. In IEEE Sensors 2025. IEEE, 2025. [4] Manuel E Rao, Jochen Moll, Peter Kraemer, and Viktor Krozer. Experimental application of a reversible reference damage model for radar-based shm of glass fiber reinforced polymer structures. In 2025 IEEE 12th International Workshop on Metrology for AeroSpace (MetroAeroSpace), pages 780–784. IEEE, 2025.