Wind power

Vibration sensors for monitoring wind turbine health

Wind turbine operators and maintenance engineers face big pressure to avoid unplanned outages and expensive costs on unscheduled repairs. Measuring low level vibrations helps to identify problems, provide an early warning of fault conditions, and avoid catastrophic damage. Reliability engineers are experts at keeping wind turbines operational. They use vibration diagnostics to find the root cause of problems and establish a baseline of wind turbine health.

Wind power applications and components where vibration monitoring is used to collect operational data for predictive maintenance to identify operational problems and faults in the early stages include

• Turbines
• Gearbox conditions
• Bearings
• Main shaft
• Tower sway

Read wind turbine condition monitoring applications note below

Read vibration monitoring for wind turbine applications note here

Wilcoxon vibration monitoring sensors for wind turbine monitoring include built-in safeguards for reliable monitoring, consistent, long-term performance in potentially charged atmospheres found in wind turbine environments

Wilcoxon high voltage (HV) and low frequency sensors are available in permanent mount, compact and top-exit configurations. They are ideal for wind turbine condition monitoring and predictive maintenance applications.

Wilcoxon HV series sensors for wind turbine applications provide:

• High EMI (electromagnetic interference) resistant
• Monitoring protection up to 6000V

Wilcoxon low frequency sensors feature:

• Clear signals at low vibration levels down to <0.1 Hz
• True high-sensitivity design for greater signal to noise ratio
• Built-in low-pass filter protects against sensor overload

Wilcoxon sensors for wind power applications include the following features:

• Ceramic housing
• Detect both low and high speed vibrations
• Case isolated, ESD protection, reverse wiring protection

Recommended Wilcoxon vibration-based condition monitoring solutions for effective and reliable fault detection in wind turbines: