Monitoring wind turbine rotor blades

As a result of increasingly longer blades, the systems monitoring their loads and oscillations must keep up with rising demands. The monitoring product utilises strain gauges glued into the rotor blades. These sensors provide measuring data for calculating the mechanical stress imposed on the rotor blades. Freely programmable digital outputs can be used to transmit an alert signal in the event that configured thresholds are exceeded. All data can be made available for performing analyses. Data transfer takes place either via an optional modem or directly via the fieldbus built into the WPI. The product can be integrated in virtually any bus environment, including Profinet, Profibus, Modbus, or CAN.

There are two versions available, depending on whether the system is to be introduced as a retrofit or is to be part of the electrical design. The box product is suitable for retrofitting and comes with a fully preassembled control cabinet ready for mounting in the hub. The SD card option addresses customers who want to install the controller and I/O modules into the pitch control cabinets.

Please visit www.phoenixcontact.co.uk to find out more about RBTM (Rotor Blade Tension Monitoring) products from Phoenix Contact.