Cost-Optimal Maintenance Planning for Defects on Wind Turbine Blades

Yi Yang and John Dalsgaard Sørensen
Additional contact information
Yi Yang: Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark
John Dalsgaard Sørensen: Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: Due to the considerable increase in clean energy demand, there is a significant trend of increased wind turbine sizes, resulting in much higher loads on the blades. The high loads can cause significant out-of-plane deformations of the blades, especially in the area nearby the maximum chord. This paper briefly presents a discrete Markov chain model as a simplified probabilistic model for damages in wind turbine blades, based on a six-level damage categorization scheme applied by the wind industry, with the aim of providing decision makers with cost-optimal inspection intervals and maintenance strategies for the aforementioned challenges facing wind turbine blades. The in-history inspection information extracted from a database with inspection information was used to calibrate transition probabilities in the discrete Markov chain model. With the calibrated transition probabilities, the damage evolution can be statistically simulated. The classical Bayesian pre-posterior decision theory, as well as condition-based maintenance strategy, was used as a basis for the decision-making. An illustrative example with transverse cracks is presented using a reference wind turbine.

Keywords: discrete Markov chain model; transverse cracks; condition-based maintenance; maintenance strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/998/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/998/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:6:p:998-:d:213938

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().