Electrostatic monitoring of wind turbine gearbox on oil-lubricated system

The electrostatic sensing technique has been verified to be a viable method for tribo-contact monitoring under laboratory conditions in previous investigations. This paper reports on the evolution of electrostatic monitoring on a real oil-lubricated wind turbine gearbox, using a modified oil-line sensor. In a nominal test and a ramp-up test, features were extracted and the presence of debris can be detected. The permutation entropy was further introduced in an accelerated life test. It can accurately reflect the wear condition of the gearboxes and detect early faults earlier than conventional techniques, which also has a better sensitivity and performance degradation trend than time-domain features.