Condition Monitoring Architecture

To Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Eric Bechhoefer
NRG Systems 110 Riggs Rd Hinesburg, VT 05461
AbstractThe lack of widespread adoption of condition monitoring systems (CMS) in wind turbines is due, in part, to the high total cost of ownership. After the initial purchase, there is installation, Information Technology (servers/database/software support) and knowledge creation cost. Knowledge creation refers to the ability of the CMS to provide the operator with actionable information. Presented is a CMS architecture which reduces the total cost of ownership by reducing hardware cost (MEMS based sensor and local processing), reducing IT cost by deploying to a compute cloud, and reducing the cost of knowledge creation by incorporating advanced digital signal processing and decision support algorithms into the CMS application. Keywords - condition monitoring; MEMS sensor; cloud computing; decision algorithms

Brogan Morton
NRG Systems 110 Riggs Rd Hinesburg, VT 05461 condition indicators) are then sent to a monitoring station. Most accelerometers used today are piezoelectric (PZT) devices which convert the shear forces from an acceleration to charge. As such, they have limited low frequency performance (2Hz to 10 KHz at +/-10% error). Each accelerometer must be wired separately to the signal conditioning/control unit. Most control units have 16 or more channels. Many larger turbines have main shaft rates, planetary gearbox rates, and tower/nacelle monitoring frequencies which are below 1 Hz. For example, the main input shaft of a Repower M92 is 0.25 Hz, while the low speed shaft (output of the planetary section) is only 1.71 Hz: both shafts are below the bandwidth of most piezoelectric sensors. This type of hardware architecture has three major cost drivers: the accelerometers, the signal conditioning/computer component, and the harnessing. The accelerometers are a major expense. Low frequency accelerometers are needed to measure low frequency vibration accurately, which adds additional cost. The computer component is a batch resource: if it has 8 channels and a 9th channel is needed, a new board needs to be installed. If it has extra channels, those channels are a sunk cost the operator is pays for without using. If one can change the paradigm and use to a MEMS (microelectromechanical system) accelerometer, the entire hardware architecture can be changed from a centralized processing system to a distributed processing system. B. MEMS Based Accelerometers The newest generation of MEMS accelerometers offers performance that in many cases is superior to traditional PZT devices if it is packaged correctly. MEMS accelerometers sense changes in capacitance, based on distance from a reference, instead of charge due to shear. Because of this physically different way to measure acceleration, these devices can measure from DC to 32 KHz. However, since MEMS accelerometers are voltage-loop devices (PZT are current looped and have better electromagnetic noise immunity), they must be packaged with an analog to digital converter at the sensor. One disadvantage of MEMS accelerometers is that they are noisier than PZT accelerometers. The power spectral density of a typical accelerometer at 1 KHz is 10 to 190g/ Hz (see [5]). Compare this to a wideband MEMS device, such as Analog Devices ADXL001 with 4mg/ Hz, or approximately 2 to 40 times noisier. That said, from a system perspective the data

I.

INTRODUCTION

The experience of wind turbine operators is that the equipment (gearboxes, generators, pitch/yaw motors, transformers) routinely fails before their design life is reached. This results in significant unplanned and costly maintenance actions. Predictive, or on condition, maintenance practices using on-line condition monitoring systems (CMS) allow the operator to activate the logistics supply chain prior to failure. This can prevent an up tower repair event from cascading into a down tower maintenance event that requires a costly crane. If a crane is required for a down tower event, maintenance events can be consolidated opportunistically if the CMS indicates they will be needed in the near future. Despite a large body of evidence (ref [1],[2],[3]) quantifying the benefit of on condition maintenance practices, most existing turbines operate without CMS, and few new turbines are sold with an installed CMS. This suggests that owners and operators of wind farms are finding the total ownership cost of CMS is too high. How does one reverse this trend? One suggestion is to fundamentally change the architecture of the CMS system to make it more attractive to own. This is done through a combination of architectural changes to the hardware, software, and system design options that improve the value of CMS II. LOWERING THE COST OF HARDWARE

A. Hardware Architecture For the most part, current CMS use at least 8 vibration sensors for the gearbox ([4]), which are wired to a signal condition card where data conversion is performed. This digitized data is then operated on by a computer, and data (e.g.

acquisition, processing and CI generation gives significant process gain and a large reduction in noise. As an example, a typical shaft analysis would result in a time synchronous average (TSA, see [5],[6]) of length 8196 for 20 revolutions. The reduction in non-synchronous noise (part of which is accelerometer self noise) is the product of the process gain due to the TSA (1/ rev or 0.2236) and the noise reduction of the spectrum of the TSA (1/ (length/2) or 0.011), which in total is 0.0025 x spectral density. This reduction is more than adequate for most CMS analysis. The use of a MEMS accelerometer does not significantly affect the ability to detect component fault given the process gain of the CMS analysis. C. Sensor Based Analysis In the proposed architecture, each sensor consists of an analog board connected to a standardized digital board. The analog board contains signal conditioning (anti aliasing filter and analog to digital converter) for the particular sensor (such as a MEMS accelerometer), while the digital board has memory, a microcontroller and a receiver/transmitter for communication. This facilitates reuse (each new sensor type has a common digital backplane/communications) and scalability. If more sensors are needed on a system, new sensors are simply added to the data bus. If new sensor types are needed, a framework using the existing digital backplane is integrated with the new sensor. Currently, low speed vibration (0 to 20 Hz), high speed vibration (0 to 33 KHz), oil condition and tachometer sensors are anticipated, but strain/structural health monitoring or electronics condition health monitoring sensors could be added to the architecture. The digital backplane is designed around a microcontroller with a FPU (floating point unit), which allows all processing (vibration data for the accelerometer or zero crossing data for the tachometer) to be done locally at the sensor. Included on the digital backplane is RAM (the current design incorporates 32 MB), RS-485 for communication, and local power managements (a buck converter, which can accommodate 10 to 55 volts DC). In this type of architecture, the tachometer sensor performs a special function of calculating the zero crossing. In most CMS system, the tachometer sensor is wired directly to the data acquisition system/computer, and the zero crossing time are calculated and applied to the vibration data from each accelerometer at the computer. In the proposed system, the calculated zero crossing data, at the end of the acquisition, is broadcast to all sensors so that each sensor has the ability to synchronize vibration data and perform the TSA for shaft and gear analysis. In some regards, local process greatly simplifies signal conditioning and ESD/EMI issues. The MEMS device requires the analog to digital conversion at the sensor. This puts rigor on the packaging to provide a Faraday shield for the accelerometer. This means that there is no opportunity for the analog signal to be corrupted by EMI, or for the system to radiate. In order to further reduce cost, an alternative to stainless steal packaging was developed. A low cost, manufacturing

friendly method to encapsulate the sensor electronics was needed. This package also needs to be light and stiff to provide a good vibration transfer function to the sensor. Finally, it must be both thermally and electrically conductive. Coolpoly E2 material was selected. E2 is an engineered liquid crystal polymer and has similar conductivity to stainless steel but only 40% of the mass. Testing of the packages sensor demonstrated a flat transfer function from DC to greater than 17 KHz (limit of the test equipment). Figure 1 shows a prototype of the polymer packaging.

Figure 1 Polymer packaging for the sensor and processing.

The cost of injection molding the package (including E2 material) was found to be 12% the cost of traditional packaging. This coupled with the lower cost of the MEMS accelerometer (a third the cost of the traditional accelerometer), low cost embedded components (RAM, microcontroller, communication, signal conditioning, etc), resulted in significant cost saving over traditional systems. D. Local Data Concentrator One aspect of the architecture this is not present in current systems is the concept of the local data concentrator (LDC). The LDC supplies hotel power for the sensors, commands sensor acquisitions, marshals the sensor CI data, provides local persistent data storage, acts as RS-485 to ethernet bridge, and provides a central point for ESD/EMI and EMC protection. The LDC hardware is based on the sensor digital backplane, but incorporates SD RAM and an ethernet capability. Since basic functionality is similar, the design has many common elements, reducing development time. For example the serial communication (RS-485) and power supply are the same, allowing both hardware and software reuse. The LDC processes no vibration data, but instead must provide all of the support for TCP/IP and https. This is a significant amount of embedded software to develop but a number of vendors have been found which provide the basic functionality, significantly reducing the cost and time of development. Figure 2 provides a notional view of an installed CMS system on a notional wind turbine.

cost (e.g. lost revenue due to the turbine being out of service). Each component has numerous fault modes. Shafts can be out of balance, cracked, bent or misaligned. Gears can have scuffing, pitting, breathing cracks, a broken tooth, misalignment, or eccentricity. Bearings can have a damaged inner race, outer race or roller/ball elements. Each component will have specific frequencies associated with their geometric size, the main shaft rate and fault type. Additionally, the wind turbine environment is subject to varying loads that affects the main shaft rate, and consequently, all of the component rates. This necessitates some methodology to normalize the vibration data (e.g. shaft rate) to a common frequency scale so that information from one acquisition can be compared to another acquisition. Traditionally, this normalization is performed using order analysis ([5]) on spectral data. This is adequate for measuring shaft orders (vibration associated with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd harmonic of a shaft RPM) and gear mesh tones. However, many gear fault modes cause impact signatures or time varying load signatures, which a spectrum cannot detect. Recall that Fourier analysis is used for measuring the energy of a sinusoidal signal and assumes the signal is stationary. Impact signatures are better analyzed using methods based on algorithms operating on the time synchronous averaging (TSA, see [6],[7] and [8]). For example, statistics (a condition indicator or CI) of the residual or energy operator of the TSA have been shown to detect gear tooth pitting and scuffing. Further, CIs taken on the amplitude or frequency modulation of the narrow band signal ([8]) are effective in detecting a soft/cracked tooth (seeError! Reference source not found.). Both the order analysis and TSA techniques require a tachometer input. A. Algorithms for Embedded Analysis Because there is no single CI which can detect all faults on all components, the embedded software must perform a variety of analysis to ensure a CMS capability. For Shaft, typical analyses include: Shaft Order 1, 2 and 3, which is the amplitude of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd harmonic of the shaft rate. Statistics of the TSA, such as RMS, Kurtosis, Peak to Peak, etc.

Figure 2 Notional System Layout with Sensors, Tachometer, LDC and Cloud Server

III.

SOFTWARE CONSIDERATIONS

There are three major software parts that affect the long term ownership cost of the system: Algorithmic: this design aspect covers the digital signal processing of the vibration signals for fault detection, the organization of the data, and in general, what information is collected on the system. Display/User Interface: this design aspect covers the knowledge that can be displayed to the user, and cost associated with maintaining software. Prognostic: this design aspect covers the estimation of the remaining useful life of individual components (and therefore the system) allowing users to optimize maintenance activities.

The algorithmic design issues are complicated in that there is no industry accepted metrics to gauge performance. It is assumed by the operation/maintainer that when they buy a CMS, it works as advertised. While it is absolutely the case that at some point all systems can detect a fault, the goal of a CMS is to detect a fault early enough to prevent collateral damage to the gearbox and provide a long enough planning horizon to facilitate logistic support. This ability to detect faults early drives the architectural design that directly impacts performance. While some attempts have been made through certification ([4]) to ensure a basic level of performance, this does guarantee that these CMS can detect all faults in a timely manner. A typical wind turbine gearbox consists of three-stages: A low frequency planetary input, with associated planet, ring and sun gear with supporting bearings, A low speed shaft and gear, with support bearings, A intermediate shaft, gear and pinion, and support bearings and a High-speed shaft, pinion and bearings.

These analyses require calculation of the TSA and then taking the FFT of the TSA. Figure 3 represents the analysis process.

Each component in the gearbox should be monitoring individually because each component can cause a maintenance action with a direct cost (e.g. materials cost) and opportunity

Figure 3 Shaft Analysis

There are at least six failure modes for gears: surface disturbances, scuffing, deformations, surface fatigue, fissures/cracks and tooth breakage. As noted, each type of failure mode will generate a different fault signature. Additionally, relative to the energy associated with gear mesh tone and other noise sources, the fault signatures are typically small. A number of researchers have proposed analysis techniques to identify these different faults [7], [8], [9]. Typically, these analyses are based on the operation of the TSA. Examples of analysis are: Residual, where the strong tones of the TSA are removed. Damage such as a soft/broken tooth generates a 1 per rev impact in the TSA. In the Fourier domain of the TSA, these impacts are expressed as multiple harmonic of the 1 per rev. The strong tones are removed in the Fourier domain, and then the inverse FFT is performed which allows the impact signature to become prominent. CIs are statistics of this waveform (RMS, Peak 2 Peak, Crest Factor, and Kurtosis). Energy operator, which is a type of residual of the autocorrelation function. For a nominal gear, the predominant vibration is gear mesh. Surface disturbances, scuffing, etc, generate small higher frequency values which are not removed by autocorrelation. Formally, the EO is: TSA2:n-1 x TSA2:n-1 x TSA1:n-2 x TSA3:n . The bold indicates a vector of TSA values. The CIs of the EO are the standard statistics of the EO vector Narrowband Analysis operates on the TSA by filtering out all tones except that of the gear mesh and in a given bandwidth around gear mesh. It is calculated by zeroing bins in the Fourier transform of the TSA, except in the passband around gear mesh. The bandwidth is typically 10% of the number of teeth on the gear under analysis. For example, a 23 tooth gear analysis would retain bins 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25, and there conjugates in Fourier domain. Then the inverse FFT is taken, and statistics of waveform are taken. Narrowband analysis can capture sideband modulation of the gear mesh tone due to misalignment, or a cracked/broken tooth. Amplitude Modulation (AM) analysis is the absolute value of the Hilbert transform of the Narrowband signal. For a gear with minimum transmission error, the AM analysis feature should be a constant value. Faults will greatly increase the kurtosis of the signal Frequency Modulation (FM) analysis is the derivative of the angle of the Hilbert transform of the Narrowband signal. Its is a powerful tool capable of detecting changes of phase due to uneven tooth loading, characteristic of a number of fault types.

calculate the gear CIs. The example TSA is from a spiral bevel gear with surface pitting and scuffing. Note the effectiveness of the EO in detecting the fault.

Figure 4 Gear Analysis

Bearing analysis is based on taking the spectrum of the enveloped bearing signal. See [10] for a full description. NOTE: All of these analysis are based on the FFT. The concept of local processing to reduce total hardware cost can be achieved by using low cost embedded microcontrollers. This is because higher end processors are too large to be packaged with the sensor, while a pure digital signal processor (DSP) chip does not have the input/output needed to support the interface needed to function. Many DSP capabilities have been incorporated into low power microcontrollers. Devices from Atmel, Renesas, Texas Instruments, etc, incorporate a floating point unit (FPU) while maintaining the input/output advantages of the microcontroller in a small package. The analysis that needs to be performed is computationally intensive and memory resource expensive. Consider analysis on the intermediate shaft of a commercial wind turbine, with a 7.25 Hz shaft rate. Given a sample rate of 100 KHz (common for many CMS), the TSA length will be (assuming radix 2 FFT): = 2!"#$
!"#! !""""" !.!"

= 16384

(1)

Consider a design requirement where one wants 50 revolutions for the TSA, then the sample length is: ceil(50/7.25) = 7 seconds, or 700,000 data points. The intermediate shaft has two gears connected to it. The order of operations for the analysis of the shaft and gears is: Shaft Order Calculation: Gear Residual: Gear AM Analysis: Gear FM Analysis: 1 FFT 1 FFT, 1 IFFT, 1 Hilbert Transform 1 Hilbert Transform

Gear Narrowband Analysis: 1 FFT, 1 IFFT

For a more complete description of these analyses, see [7]. Figure 4 is an example of the gear processing needed to

The order of operations for the TSA, Energy Operator, and statistics is linear, but the FFT is n x log2(n). Note also that the Hilbert transform is calculated by performing the FFT, setting the negative spectrum to zero, then taking the IFFT. This allows a rough order of operations as:

Analysis Shaft Gears: Residual Gears: Energy Op Gears: Narrowband Gears: AM Analysis Gears: FM Analysis

Linear Ops. 51 2 4 2 2 2

n log2(n) 1 4 0 4 4 4

reducing the accuracy of the alert system. Typically a diagnostics engineer would be needed to create alert levels, which also drives up the total cost of ownership. Such ad hoc settings can lead to increased false alarm rates (type I error) or reduced sensitivity to actual faults (type II error). Both of these errors reduce the end-user confidence and erode the value of the system. Prior to detailing the mathematical methods used to develop the HI, a nomenclature for component health is needed. To simplify presentation and knowledge creation for a user, a uniform meaning across all components in the monitored machine should be developed. The measured CI statistics (e.g. PDFs) will be unique for each component type (due to different rates, materials, loads, etc). This means that the critical values (thresholds) will be different for each monitored component. By using the HI paradigm, one can normalize the CIs, such that the HI is independent of the component. Using guidance from[14], the HI will be designed such that there are two alert levels: warning and alarm. Further, a common nomenclature for the HI can be developed, such that: The HI ranges from 0 to 1, where the probability of exceeding an HI of 0.5 is the PFA, A warning alert is generated when the HI is greater than or equal to 0.75. Maintenance should be planned by estimating the RUL until the HI is 1.0. An alarm alert is generated when the HI is greater than or equal to 1.0. Continued operations could cause collateral damage.

This gives an order of operations of a63n + b17 nlog2(n) for each local processing unit (a and b are non-zero constants related to the number of math operations for a given function). Even with these relatively powerful microcontrollers, extensive improvement of the FFT algorithm was needed in order to perform these analysis is a timely manner. Since the vibration data is real, one is able to take advantage of using a real FFT, which reduces the memory use by half and is 2.5 x faster than the FFT. By using Clenshaws recurrence and direct lookup of transcendental function, at 30% reduction in processing time can be achieved over the real FFT. Finally, since the real FFT performs far fewer operations on the data (and the precision of the ADC is at best 24 bit), moving from a double precision number to a float representation will reduce the processing time by an order of 5. These improvements to the analysis engine reduced the time required by the FFT by: 1.3 x 2.5 x 5, or up to sixteen times faster than benchmark. This allowed processing of analysis, on a 50 MHz Renesas RX62x chip, to be performed is under 30 seconds with a modest 32 MB of RAM. B. Human Factors and Knowledge Creation Because no single CI can detect all failure modes, this drives a user display requirement to view, threshold and trend information that incorporates more than just spectral data or one CI. There are numerous CIs that could be used for each shaft, gear and bearing in the gearbox. Combining various CIs requires a data reduction (e.g. knowledge creation) methodology that is both intuitive and user friendly. One such technique to display this information is to use the concept of a Health Indicator (HI) [11]. Computationally, the use of HIs is attractive. Health indicators consist of the integration of several condition indicators into one value that provides the health status of the component to the end user. Highlighted in [11] are a number of advantages of the HI over CIs, such as: controlling false alarm rate, improved detection, and simplification of user display. Further, [8] describes a threshold setting process for gear health, where the HI is a function of the CI distributions. This allows a generalized process of for threshold setting, regardless of the correlation between the CIs. Providing an automated methodology for setting the HI alert levels (warning and alarm) for each individual component is critically important. Without such a methodology the end user is left to manually apply the levels in an ad hoc manner increasing the complexity of the commissioning process and

Note that this nomenclature does not define a probability of failure for the component, or that the component fails when the HI is 1.0. Rather, it suggests a change in operator behavior to a proactive maintenance policy: perform maintenance prior to the generations of cascading faults. For example, by performing maintenance on a bearing prior the bearing shedding extensive material, costly gearbox replacement can be avoided. This is actionable information vital for knowledge creation. The concept of thresholding was explored in [12], where for a single CI, a probability density function (PDF) for the Rician/Rice statistical distribution was used to set a threshold based on an probability of false alarm (PFA). This is contrasted with [13], who explored the relationship between a CI threshold and PFA to describe the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) of the CI for a given fault. Additionally, Dempsey used the ROC to evaluate the performance of the CI for a fault type. These methods support a data driven approach for prognostics by formalizing a method for threshold setting. In setting thresholds, it is important to control the correlation between CIs. All CIs have a probability distribution (PDF). Any operation on the CI to form a health index (HI) is then a function of distributions [15]. Functions such as: The maximum of n CI (the order statistics) The sum of n CIs, or The norm of n CIs (energy)

are valid if and only if the distribution (e.g. CIs) are independent and identical [15]. For Gaussian distribution, subtracting the mean and dividing by the standard deviation will give identical Z distributions. The issue of ensuring independence is much more difficult. In general, the correlation between CIs is non-zero. As an example, many of the correlation coefficients for Residual RMS, Energy Operator RMS, FM0, NB KT, AM KT and FM RMS, are near 1 (see Table 1). These CIs have been found to be effective for many gear faults. Table 1 Correlation Coefficients for the Six Gear CIs
ij CI 1 CI 2 CI 3 CI 4 CI 5 CI 6 CI 1 1 CI 2 0.84 1 CI 3 0.79 0.46 1 CI 4 0.66 0.27 0.96 1 CI 5 -0.47 -0.59 -0.03 0.11 1 CI 6 0.74 0.36 0.97 0.98 0.05 1

As an example of the importance of correlation on normalization, consider a simple HI function: HI = CI1 + CI2. The CIs will be normally distributed with mean 0 and standard deviation of 1. The standard deviation of this HI is: !" =
! ! !" ! + !"! + 2!"!,!"! !"! !"!

(2)

where CI1,CI2 is the correlation between CI1 and CI2. If one assumes CI1,CI2 is 0.0, then HI = 1.414 (e.g. the (2)). For a PFA of 10-6, the threshold is then 6.722. Consider the case in which the observed correlation is closer to 1 (e.g. CI1,CI2 is 1.0), then the observed HI = 2. For a threshold of 6.722, the operational PFA is 4 x 10-4. This is 390 times greater than the designed PFA. This illustrates the deleterious effect of correlation on threshold setting. The concept of the CI as a function of distribution is powerful. As an example, consider a NASA run-to-failure test of a gear ([8]). Covariance and mean values for the six CI were calculated by sampling healthy data from four gears prior to the fault propagating. This was done by randomly selecting 100 data points from each gear, and calculating the covariance and means over the resulting 400 data points. The estimated gear health is plotted in Error! Reference source not found., where the damage on the gear at the end of the test is seen in the upper left corner. See [8] for more details.

This correlation between CIs implies that for a given function of distributions to have a threshold that operationally meets the design PFA, the CIs must be whitened (e.g. decorrelated). In [16], Fukunaga presents a whitening transform using the Eigenvector matrix multiplied by the square root for the Eigenvalues (diagonal matrix) of the covariance of the CIs: A = 1/2 T, where T is the transpose of the eigenvalue matrix and and is the eigenvalue matrix. The transform is not orthonormal: the Euclidean distances are not preserved in the transform. While ideal for maximizing the distance (separation) between classes (such as in a Baysian classifier), the distribution of the original CI is not preserved. This property of the transform makes it inappropriate for threshold setting. If the CIs represented a metric such as shaft order acceleration, then one can construct an HI which is the square of the normalized power (e.g. square root of the acceleration squared). This can be defined as normalized energy, where through whitening of the CI the operational PFA was the same as the design specification PFA. A more general whitening solution can be found using Cholesky decomposition (see [8]). The Cholesky decomposition of Hermitian, positive definite matrix results in A = LL*, where L is a lower triangular, and L* is its conjugate transpose. By definition, the inverse covariance is positive definite Hermitian. It then follows that if: LL* = -1, then Y = L x CIT. The vector CI is the correlated CIs used for the HI calculation, and Y is 1 to n independent CI with unit variance (one CI representing the trivial case). The Cholesky decomposition, in effect, creates the square root of the inverse covariance. This in turn is analogous to dividing the CI by its standard deviation (the trivial case of one CI). In turn, Y = L x CIT creates the necessary independent and identical distributions required to calculate the critical values for a function of distributions.

Figure 5 Example of HI for Gear Run to Failure

C. Prognostic Modeling The HI paradigm also facilitates data driven prognostics. Instead of thresholding individual CI values and modeling fault progression for each CI, the remaining useful life (RUL) of a component is the time until the HI is 1.0. This was explored in [17], where a state space model was developed to estimate the coefficient of a Paris Law equation. The state space model can be constructed as a parallel system to the plant (e.g. the system under study). This requires an appropriate model to simulate the system dynamics. In general, failure modes propagating in mechanical systems are

difficult to model at a level of fidelity that would generate any meaningful results (e.g. Health and RUL based on physics of failure). One needs a generalized, data driven process that can model the plant adequately enough to generate RUL with small error. Since 1953, a number of fault growth theories have been proposed, such as: net area stress theories, accumulated strain hypothesis, dislocation theories, and others [18]. Through substitution of variables, most of these theories can be generalized by the Paris Law: da/dN = D(K)n. Paris Law governs the rate of crack growth in a homogenous material, where: da/dN is the rate of change of the half crack length, D is a material constant of the crack growth equation,

just one value. A tree view of a wind farm lists the max HI values of each monitored component. The user is then able to quickly drill down to a tower, a component in a tower (e.g. the health), then view the CIs that were used in the HI calculation. While the RUL is given so that logistics can be planned, access to the CI allows maintainer more actionable information as to the type of fault (failure mode) and severity. This knowledge creation has great value in that it allows better maintenance of the wind farm.

K is the range of strain K during a fatigue cycle,

n is the exponent of the crack growth equation.

The range of strain, K is given as: K= 2(a)1/2, where

is gross strain, is a geometric correction factor, and

a is the half crack length.
Figure 6 Data Driven Prognostic Using Paris Law

These variables are specific to a given material and test article. In practice, the variables are unknown. This requires some simplifying assumptions to be made to facilitate analysis. For many materials, the crack growth exponent is 2, [19]. The geometric correction factor is set to 1 (a constant which will accounted for in the calculation of D), which allows Paris law to be reduced to: da/dN = D(42a). Taking the inverse da/dN gives the rate of change in cycles per change in crack length, or: dN/da = 1/[D(42a)]. Integrating over crack length give the number of cycles (for near synchronous systems, RUL is N x rpm): = 1 4 ! ! ! (3)

Perhaps more important, the HI ensures a constant PFA. The CMS is designed such that the PFA is 10-6. Then using the appropriate distributions (e.g. it is not assumed that the CI used in the HI is Gaussian. In fact, most CI distributions are nonGaussian), the HI algorithm is developed using statistics methods (method of moments, see [15]). The maintainer is then assured that a component with an HI of one requires maintenance. The last major cost of CMS to the operator is the expense of hosting and maintaining the software. The database and user interface application must reside on a server, which is a cost to the operator. In the proposed architecture, instead of hosting the application on an internal server, or renting external server space, the application is hosted on a cloud, such as Amazons Elastic Compute Could (EC2). The EC2 is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity. This allows the CMS vendor to effectively sell usage for the system. This means that there will be a lower initial cost for the wind farm operator because they do not need to pay the initial capital costs associated with the server or the personnel costs to maintain it. This model is attractive the CMS vendor as it simplifies software maintenance cost. All complex software systems have bugs. Additionally, software updates improve or add new features. Hosting one software image on the EC2 simplifies software updates and maintenance activities. Because EC2 provides better configuration management of the server environment (add ins and dlls are controlled), system test and reliability are higher. Finally, even as the user base of the application grows, the

where the current measured crack is ao and the final crack length af. Since the crack length is unknown, the current state, HI, will be used as a surrogate for ao while af will be 1.0 (the RUL is the time from the current HI state until the HI is 1.0). N is the RUL times some constant (RPM for example). The material crack constant, D, can be estimated as: D = da/dN /(42a). Gross strain cannot generally be measured, thus, an appropriate surrogate value (e.g. torque, or yaw misalignment) will be used. In Figure 6, a data driven prognostic was developed using Paris Law to model crack propagation. The display shows the current measured HI, the filtered HI and a prognostic with RUL until warning and alarm. Perhaps most important is a bound on the prognostic performance, and measure of prognostics validity. See [17] for more details. From a display and trending perspective, the HI concept facilitates the management of a large number of data items with

cloud services provide secure, robust environment at a cost which most operators could not match locally. IV. CONCLUSION It is evident that for many operators, CMS is not an essential support tool. The wide spread deployment of CMS will only occur if wind farm operator/maintainers find strong benefit. This suggests that lowering the cost or enhancing the value of CMS will facilitate widespread deployment of systems. The CMS architecture directly affects both cost and value. By: Using non-traditional vibration sensing, new packaging and design methods, both the initial cost and installation cost can be reduced over existing systems. Incorporating advance signal processing techniques allows the collection of more actionable information. Improved user interface and better fault modeling with access to more actionable information facilitates prognostics (an estimation of the remaining useful life) and better logistic support.

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Finally, utilization of cloud services reduces initial server setup cost and long term software maintenance cost. These architectural decisions will be incorporated in new CMS, which may become the new benchmark for condition monitoring performance. That could then reduce operations and maintenance costs, improving the profitability of wind farms and help make renewable energy a more attractive investment. REFERENCES

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