The Journal of the Acoustical Society of KoreaISSN:1225-4428(Print) 2287-3775(Online)한국음향학회

Condition Monitoring System (CMS) has been used to detect unexpected faults of wind turbine caused by the abrupt change of circumstances or the aging of its mechanical part. In fact, it is a very hard work to do regular inspection for its maintenance because wind turbine is located on the mountaintop or sea. The purpose of this study is to find out distribution patterns of vibration signals measured from the main mechanical parts of wind turbine according to its operation condition. To this end, acceleration signals of main bearing, gearbox, generator, wind speed, rotational speed, etc were measured through the long period more than 2 years and trend analyses on each signal were conducted as a function of the rotational speed. In addition, correlation analysis among the signals was done to grasp the relation between mechanical parts. As a result, the vibrations were dependent on the rotational speed of main shaft and whether power was generated or not, and their distributions at a specific rotational speed could be approximated to Weibull distribution. It was also investigated that the vibration at main bearing was correlated with vibration at gearbox each other, whereas vibration at generator should be dealt with individually because of generating mechanism. These results can be used for improving performance of CMS that early detects the mechanical abnormality of wind turbine.