Open Access
Optimal strain-gauge placement for mechanical load estimation in circular cross-section shafts
(Elsevier, 2021) Iriarte Goñi, Xabier; Aginaga García, Jokin; Gainza González, Gorka; Ros Ganuza, Javier; Bacaicoa Díaz, Julen; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC
The customary electrical circuit configuration for estimating mechanical loads with strain gauges uses Wheatstone full- or half-bridges. For each mechanical load to be estimated, a dedicated bridge with two or four gauges has to be mounted, placing the strain gauges in specific configurations along the measured part. In this paper the strain of individual gauges is measured by means of quarter-bridges and all the mechanical loads exerted on a shaft are estimated jointly as different linear combinations of the strains of the gauges. The location of the gauges on the shaft are determined optimally and the influence of apparent strain related to temperature variations is avoided. Results show several configurations of reduced sets of gauges capable of optimally estimating the six components of the mechanical loads exerted on a circular cross-section shaft. The validation of the approach in a dedicated rig has shown the complexity of its experimental implementation.
Open Access
Triaxial accelerometer based azimuth estimator for horizontal axis wind turbines
(Elsevier, 2023) Plaza Puértolas, Aitor; Ros Ganuza, Javier; Gainza González, Gorka; Fuentes Lárez, José David; Ingeniería; Ingeniaritza; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
One of the elements that receives the greatest stresses is the main shaft. Its damage is directly related to the cyclical nature of its rotational motion. However, the vast majority of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) do not have sensors to measure the main-shaft angular position (azimuth), or they are not always easily accessible. Using a main-shaft placed single triaxial accelerometer for the estimation of the azimuth is proposed as a low intrusion approach that can be easily deployed in machines already in use. An approach using a tandem of two extended Kalman filters (calibration/prediction), aiming for a precise and robust estimation, is presented. The estimator is able to calibrate for accelerometer positional and orientation errors, as well as for bias drift. To simplify the burden of deployment, a simple procedure is proposed to determine the covariance matrices for a particular HAWT from those determined in a synthetic case. The proposed approach is analyzed using synthetic data, OpenFAST simulation of NREL-5MW HAWT. It outperforms the ATAN naive approach by an order of magnitude, showing errors smaller than 0.4o. The filter shows a good behavior, coherent with that of the synthetic setup, when tested on experimental data obtained from a 3MW HAWT.
Open Access
Optimal strain gauge configurations for the estimation of mechanical loads in the main shaft of HAWT
(IOP Publishing, 2020) Iriarte Goñi, Xabier; Aginaga García, Jokin; Lerga Valencia, Francisco Javier; Gainza González, Gorka; Ros Ganuza, Javier; Bacaicoa Díaz, Julen; Ingeniaritza; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería
In Structural Health Monitoring of wind turbines, measuring the mechanical loads is a key issue. The customary techniques for this task use a full-bridge strain gauge configuration to measure each of the six load components exerted on the shaft. However, using only six strain gauges should be sufficient to estimate the six load components if a one-to-one correspondence was achieved. In this paper a different approach to mechanical loads estimation is presented where, measuring the strain of individual gauges in quarter-bridge configurations, it is possible to estimate all the load components from a single set of gauges. The configurations are optimally determined making use of the D-optimality criterion, which maximises the observability of the estimated components. The approach also provides configurations where the apparent strain related to temperature variations is automatically compensated. Results show several optimal configurations for different measuring conditions and shows that six strain gauges are enough to estimate all the load components. The new approach also opens the possibility to obtain configurations with more strain gauges as well as configurations that have to meet other requirements.

Ros Ganuza, Javier

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