Automated Quantification of Wind Turbine Blade Leading Edge Erosion from Field Images

Jeanie A. Aird (), Rebecca J. Barthelmie and Sara C. Pryor
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Jeanie A. Aird: Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Rebecca J. Barthelmie: Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Sara C. Pryor: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 6, 1-23

Abstract: Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion is a major source of power production loss and early detection benefits optimization of repair strategies. Two machine learning (ML) models are developed and evaluated for automated quantification of the areal extent, morphology and nature (deep, shallow) of damage from field images. The supervised ML model employs convolutional neural networks (CNN) and learns features (specific types of damage) present in an annotated set of training images. The unsupervised approach aggregates pixel intensity thresholding with calculation of pixel-by-pixel shadow ratio (PTS) to independently identify features within images. The models are developed and tested using a dataset of 140 field images. The images sample across a range of blade orientation, aspect ratio, lighting and resolution. Each model (CNN v PTS) is applied to quantify the percent area of the visible blade that is damaged and classifies the damage into deep or shallow using only the images as input. Both models successfully identify approximately 65% of total damage area in the independent images, and both perform better at quantifying deep damage. The CNN is more successful at identifying shallow damage and exhibits better performance when applied to the images after they are preprocessed to a common blade orientation.

Keywords: leading edge erosion; wind turbines; wind energy; image processing; image segmentation; convolutional neural network; machine learning (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: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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