Ultra Low-Power and Embeddable Blade-Condition Monitor

This SBIR/STTR project delivers an ultra-low power structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses autonomous, wirelessly embedded sensors to monitor and assess structural integrity in wind turbine blades. EASE features impedance-based active SHM, which is highly sensitive to damage like cracks, delimitations, mass variations, fastener failures and stiffness changes. Blades are the only wind turbine component designed and manufactured uniquely for wind energy applications, and the blade is perhaps the most important link in component technology. Future, improved blade designs will maximize performance at the lowest possible cost, stretch rotors to greater swept areas, and increase energy capture