Damage localization in a residential-sized wind turbine blade by use of the SDDLV method

The stochastic dynamic damage location vector (SDDLV) method has previously proved to facilitate effective damage localization in truss- and plate-like structures. The method is based on interrogating damage-induced changes in transfer function matrices in cases where these matrices cannot be derived explicitly due to unknown input. Instead, vectors from the kernel of the transfer function matrix change are utilized; vectors which are derived on the basis of the system and state-to-output mapping matrices from output-only state-space realizations. The idea is then to convert the kernel vectors associated with the lowest singular values into static pseudo-loads and apply these alternately to an undamaged reference model with known stiffness matrix. By doing so, the stresses in the potentially damaged elements will, theoretically, approach zero. The present paper demonstrates an application of the SDDLV method for localization of structural damages in a cantilevered residential-sized wind turbine blade. The blade was excited by an unmeasured multi-impulse load and the resulting dynamic response was captured through accelerometers mounted along the blade. The static pseudo-loads were applied to a finite element (FE) blade model, which was tuned against the modal parameters of the actual blade. In the experiments, an undamaged blade configuration was analysed along with different damage scenarios, hereby testing the applicability of the SDDLV method.