Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals

Abstract In recent years, the size of wind turbine blades has increased, underscoring the critical importance of monitoring their structural health. This study explores the use of noise emitted during wind turbine operation for the assessment of blade structural integrity. During sound acquisition,...

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Main Authors: Chenchen Yang, Shaohu Ding, Guangsheng Zhou
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-01-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-88276-x
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author Chenchen Yang
Shaohu Ding
Guangsheng Zhou
author_facet Chenchen Yang
Shaohu Ding
Guangsheng Zhou
author_sort Chenchen Yang
collection DOAJ
description Abstract In recent years, the size of wind turbine blades has increased, underscoring the critical importance of monitoring their structural health. This study explores the use of noise emitted during wind turbine operation for the assessment of blade structural integrity. During sound acquisition, the wind sound, pneumatic sound and mechanical sound are recorded together to form the wind turbine sound signal. Considering the computational challenges of spectral subtraction under extreme noise intensities, a pretrained sound source separation neural network was used to distinguish between random wind noise and mechanical noise in wind turbine sound signals. In this paper, the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) time-frequency diagrams of signals processed using the spectral subtraction method are compared with those processed by combining the source separation model and spectral subtraction. The results reveal that the combined approach provides a more detailed representation in the time-frequency diagrams. Additionally, the mel-scale frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) algorithm is utilized for feature extraction in the experimental dataset, forming training and test sets for the normal and abnormal datasets. To carry out damage detection, the ResNet50 deep residual neural network model is employed. The training results of the same network model were evaluated using the datasets obtained from the four different denoising schemes in the experiments and a 95% confidence level assessment metric. The analysis of the 95% confidence intervals reveals that the proposed sound source separation model combined with the traditional spectral subtraction denoising algorithm is effective in reducing the noise of wind turbine sound signals and performs well in identifying the anomalous sound generated by blade damage. Under this approach, the 95% confidence intervals of the model training set accuracies range from 0.926 to 0.965, while the confidence intervals of the test set accuracies range from 0.869 to 0.931.
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spelling doaj-art-4fe9a4a9b4504a8e826f62d7064c463b2025-02-02T12:17:31ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-01-0115112010.1038/s41598-025-88276-xWind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signalsChenchen Yang0Shaohu Ding1Guangsheng Zhou2College of Electrical and Information Engineering, North MinZu UniversityCollege of Mechatronic Engineering, North MinZu UniversityCollege of Electrical and Information Engineering, North MinZu UniversityAbstract In recent years, the size of wind turbine blades has increased, underscoring the critical importance of monitoring their structural health. This study explores the use of noise emitted during wind turbine operation for the assessment of blade structural integrity. During sound acquisition, the wind sound, pneumatic sound and mechanical sound are recorded together to form the wind turbine sound signal. Considering the computational challenges of spectral subtraction under extreme noise intensities, a pretrained sound source separation neural network was used to distinguish between random wind noise and mechanical noise in wind turbine sound signals. In this paper, the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) time-frequency diagrams of signals processed using the spectral subtraction method are compared with those processed by combining the source separation model and spectral subtraction. The results reveal that the combined approach provides a more detailed representation in the time-frequency diagrams. Additionally, the mel-scale frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) algorithm is utilized for feature extraction in the experimental dataset, forming training and test sets for the normal and abnormal datasets. To carry out damage detection, the ResNet50 deep residual neural network model is employed. The training results of the same network model were evaluated using the datasets obtained from the four different denoising schemes in the experiments and a 95% confidence level assessment metric. The analysis of the 95% confidence intervals reveals that the proposed sound source separation model combined with the traditional spectral subtraction denoising algorithm is effective in reducing the noise of wind turbine sound signals and performs well in identifying the anomalous sound generated by blade damage. Under this approach, the 95% confidence intervals of the model training set accuracies range from 0.926 to 0.965, while the confidence intervals of the test set accuracies range from 0.869 to 0.931.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-88276-xWind turbine bladeSound signalDeep residual networksDamage detection
spellingShingle Chenchen Yang
Shaohu Ding
Guangsheng Zhou
Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
Scientific Reports
Wind turbine blade
Sound signal
Deep residual networks
Damage detection
title Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
title_full Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
title_fullStr Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
title_full_unstemmed Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
title_short Wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
title_sort wind turbine blade damage detection based on acoustic signals
topic Wind turbine blade
Sound signal
Deep residual networks
Damage detection
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-88276-x
work_keys_str_mv AT chenchenyang windturbinebladedamagedetectionbasedonacousticsignals
AT shaohuding windturbinebladedamagedetectionbasedonacousticsignals
AT guangshengzhou windturbinebladedamagedetectionbasedonacousticsignals