Sensor fault detection and isolation for wind turbines based on subspace identification and Kalman filter techniques

Abstract This paper aims at the blade root moment sensor fault detection and isolation issue for three‐bladed wind turbines with horizontal axis. The underlying problem is crucial to the successful application of the individual pitch control system, which plays a key role for reducing the blade loads of large offshore wind turbines. In this paper, a wind turbine model is built based on the closed loop identification technique, where the wind dynamics is included. The fault detection issue is investigated based on the residuals generated by dual Kalman filters. Both additive faults and multiplicative faults are considered in this paper. For the additive fault case, the mean value change detection of the residuals and the generalized likelihood ratio test are utilized respectively. For multiplicative faults, they are handled via the variance change detection of the residuals. The fault isolation issue is proceeded with the help of dual sensor redundancy. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can be successfully applied to the underlying issue. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.