MEMS gyroscope sensors for wind turbine blade tip deflection measurement

Monitoring the blade tip deflection of wind turbines in real time could prevent catastrophic failures caused by blade striking the tower. In this paper, a MEMS-based gyroscope sensor is proposed to measure the wind turbine blade tip deflection. A neural network model-based estimation method is developed to estimate the blade tip deflection from 3-dimensional gyroscope data. The proposed system is validated by field test in a 1.6MW wind turbine with 100-meters rotating diameter. To evaluate the measurement accuracy, a laser distance finder is also installed on the wind turbine tower outside to give a reference value of the blade tip to tower clearance.