Turbine Design and Reliability
Smart MHK Generation System Modeling and Monitoring
Led by
Yufei Tang, Ph.D.
Affiliated Home Campus: Boca Raton
Affiliated Department: Computer & Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
PROJECT
Maintenance and repairs account for the highest cost in marine turbine operation after initial installation, as they require the fabrication of new components to replace faulty ones, costly excursions to remote undersea sites, and extensive downtime while performing diagnosis and replacement. The Smart MHK Generation System Monitoring project aims to reduce these costs by applying signal processing techniques to non-intrusively detect faults immediately following or even prior to their occurrence, allowing for remote diagnosis and intervention before damage occurs to surrounding components. Specifically, the Hilbert-Huang transform was applied to the three-phase power output of a simulated marine hydrokinetic turbine to identify fault characteristics in the case of hydrodynamic asymmetry of the rotor blades. This technique can be extended in future to identify output changes characteristic of a variety of common turbine faults.