THERMOELASTIC STRESS MEASUREMENT AND ACOUSTIC EMISSION MONITORING IN WIND

TURBINE BLADE TESTING

A G Dutton
Energy Research Unit, CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon. OX11 0QX, UK
Tel: +44 1235 445823, Fax: +44 1235 446863, E-mail: a.g.dutton@rl.ac.uk

Keywords
Wind turbine blades, blade testing, composite materials, non-destructive testing

Summary
The application of thermoelastic stress measurement techniques and acoustic emission monitoring during a wind
turbine blade fatigue test is described. The most highly loaded regions of the blade are identified and a novel
adaptation of the thermoelastic technique made to allow the identification of all known areas of developing damage in
the blade. The three resulting techniques are compared and contrasted.
Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) allows the measurement of the surface stress distribution on a blade during
cyclic loading. TSA can indicate stress concentrations and developing sub-surface damage long before any visible
surface indications develop. The technique has the advantage of requiring only low load magnitudes and can be used
to validate finite element model stress distributions during the early stages of a blade test or to characterise the spread
of damage during failure. The author has been involved in developing a novel variation of the technique that
enhanced the damage detection capability, resulting in the identification of all known damage within a test blade.
Acoustic emission (AE) monitoring can be used to proof-test a blade before and after static or fatigue loading. Since
AE detects the vibrations due to damage propagation it has the potential to be developed into a condition monitoring
technique for operational turbines. Results from the same test blade described above are presented.

Notation
AE acoustic emission
IRT infra-red thermography
NDT non-destructive testing
TE thermoelastic
TSA thermoelastic stress analysis

1. Introduction
The reliable detection and characterisation of damage in large composite structures such as wind turbine blades
undergoing fatigue testing in the laboratory is a challenging task, but potentially very valuable to designers. The
standard procedure is to monitor the blade with strain gauges during a static test to extreme load and subsequently
during an accelerated fatigue test. There is much interest, from a design point of view, in identifying the initiation and
development of damage at an early stage. This paper describes the application of acoustic emission (AE) monitoring
to a blade undergoing a series of static tests at increasing peak load until failure and thermoelastic (TE) stress analysis
and AE monitoring applied to a blade undergoing fatigue testing.
Thermoelastic stress analysis is an established technique for determining the stress distribution in isotropic materials
(see, for example, [1, 2]) by measuring the small changes in surface temperature when a component experiences
cyclic loading. The technique has been extended to composite materials (see, for example, [3, 4]), although the stress
formulation is more complex.
For an orthotropic material, the signal, S, proportional to the small change in surface temperature measured by the
infra-red detector at the test piece, can be related to the changes in the principal stress components at the surface by
[4]:

AS = (∆σ 11 + α r ∆σ 22 )
where αr is the ratio of the thermal expansion coefficients in the two material directions (1 and 2), σ is the stress, and
A is a calibration constant, dependent on the characteristics of the sensor material and the absolute temperature of the
test piece. The signal S is output from the on-board digital signal processing unit after correlating the outputs from
the infra-red sensor array with the input load signal. Thus, the technique can identify areas of high stress
concentration, which can be compared with the allowable stress magnitudes in the design. It is therefore an
engineering judgement whether a high TE reading is significant or otherwise.
One possible approach to further characterising the significance of a high TE stress measurement is to measure the
real temperature rise, which occurs whenever cyclic loading is applied [5]. Glass/polyester and glass/epoxy
composite structures typically exhibit a general temperature rise due to their viscoelastic constitutive relationships,
but damage zones are associated with additional heating [5]. Unfortunately the temperature rise is related to the
complete load history (which may be complex) and considerable further work is needed to determine whether there is
any clear relationship between damage criticality and heating rate.
An alternative approach is to look for other non-linear effects due to the presence of damage. Paynter and Dutton [6]
have developed this approach by characterising the response signal at the infra-red detector in terms of the higher
harmonics of the forcing load, achieved by incorporating a frequency-doubling circuit on the load input line to the
digital signal processing board.
AE arises when transient elastic waves are generated by a rapid release of energy inside a material. The AE method
relies on the detection of these transient stress waves, usually by means of piezoelectric transducers (sensors), and
their subsequent interpretation in terms of damage occurring in the material or structure. Such transient stress waves
can be generated for various reasons, including, in composites, crack growth, friction, flow noise, matrix crazing,
delamination, and fibre breakage.
The most important aspect of AE, compared to other NDT techniques, is that the material itself generates the signals.
The main implication of this is that, when testing a structure, the conditions must be reached that will give rise to
those mechanisms (crack propagation, fibre breakage, corrosion, partial discharge etc.) that will produce AE and
hence allow any faults to be detected. Another significant aspect is that, with a relatively small number of sensors, the
complete structure can be monitored non-intrusively.
Static and fatigue tests are routinely conducted as part of the certification process for wind turbine blades. These tests
are designed to ensure that all parts of the blade can withstand extreme load cases as defined in the wind turbine
design and testing standards [ 7,8]. It is usual practice to conduct one or more static tests up to an extreme load value,
which typically may represent the 1 in 50 years gust, and then to use the same blade for an accelerated 20 years
fatigue lifetime test. It is common for there to be sudden, audible acoustic emission during the static phase of the test,
but without proper equipment it is impossible to locate the source. It is clearly important to discover the location and
severity of any damage which occurs during the static test in order to be able to improve blade design and also to
monitor such areas during the ensuing fatigue test.
In acoustic emission (AE) monitoring, surface mounted piezoelectric sensors detect and locate the origin of sound
waves within the structure. The system is very sensitive and can detect much weaker signals than those normally
audible to test engineers, mainly in the non-audible frequency domain (20-1200 kHz). The signals can be
characterised in terms of features such as Amplitude and Energy and inferences made about the kinds of damage
process taking place in the blade. AE monitoring can determine the location and sometimes the kind of damage which
is taking place; it can also be used to determine damage criticality for a given load, but conventionally this has
required the application of long-sustained loads at this particular level.
The conventional approach to AE testing (see, for example, the procedure applied to fibre composite fan blades [9])
involves loading a structure to slightly above the highest service load and holding that load for around 10 minutes -
the so-called "load-hold" test. For a typical, undamaged fibre composite structure, emission will occur the very first
time it is loaded above a given level, but it will not then re-emit significantly on subsequent loading to that level.
Sustained emission during a load-hold is indicative of damage. Unfortunately, wind turbine blades can be subjected
to very high, but short duration loads (e.g. the 50 year gust), which cannot be (and does not, necessarily, need to be)
sustained for the length of time required for a regular AE load-hold test. A novel methodology had to be developed,
therefore, to include AE monitoring during standard blade certification tests. This methodology has been used and
verified during a series of tests on small, glass/polyester blades and the development of the methodology and some
results from the tests have been previously reported in [10-13].
Unlike thermoelastic stress analysis, acoustic emission monitoring could be applied to operational wind turbines for
condition monitoring assessment [11]. The main barriers to implementing such a system today are the cost of sensors
and collection system, and the post-processing hardware needed for signal processing. Work is ongoing to try to
address these issues.
2. Methodology
2.1 Acoustic emission monitoring
A modern AE system comprises a set of AE sensors which are mounted on the structure, pre-amplifiers to amplify
the signal and protect it from noise, cables to carry the signal to the data acquisition-analysis system, and the AE
system itself. The sensors are typically piezoelectric crystals, characterised by the natural frequency of the crystal,
which determines the response of the sensor. Sensors ratings are usually quoted in terms of the frequency of their
maximum sensitivity. Modern AE acquisition systems usually include A/D converters and feature extraction circuitry
so that they can receive and analyse a very large number of events (of order thousands) per second, enabling all
sources to be captured and investigated. The analysis is performed based on derived signal characteristics, such as
Amplitude, Duration, Frequency, Counts, etc. In addition modern systems have graphical representation of data so
that a wide range of plots can be viewed in real time and hence assist the operator in determining the source, its
nature, and its possible influence on the test in progress.
Because of the very large variation in signal strength, from microvolts to volts, a logarithmic scale is used for the
signal amplitude (i.e. Amplitude is expressed in dB). The voltage or dB level above which signals are detected is
called the threshold and this is probably the most important parameter in AE testing as it sets the sensitivity of the
test. For the tests reported here, the threshold was typically set in the range from 35 to 45 dB.
Measurements were taken using MISTRAS and SPARTAN AE systems manufactured by Physical Acoustics
Corporation and piezoelectric sensors of the type PAC-R6 with resonant frequency of 60KHz and PAC-R15 with
resonant frequency of 150KHz. Wideband sensors had been used for preliminary material investigations, but field
sensitivity calls for the use of resonant transducers.
Attenuation characteristics were measured on plates of sample material and an ideal sensor spacing of 0.5 to 1.0 m
adopted for the blade tests. Sensors were typically arranged down the quarter-chord line on the main spar, with
additional sensors towards the trailing edge in the maximum chord area.
Within the AEGIS project [10-13], a methodology was developed [11, 13] for introducing AE monitoring into the
standard blade certification test procedures and then applied during a series of tests on ten small (4.5 m) hand lay-up,
glass/polyester blades and two commercial scale (17 m) resin-infused, glass/epoxy blades [12, 13].
Results are presented in section 3 from a small blade static test (blade reference number 7s) by the Centre for
Renewable Energy Systems (CRES) in Greece and a small blade fatigue test (blade reference number 10f) by TU
Delft. These blades contained deliberately inserted flaws.

2.2 Thermoelastic stress analysis

The TE equipment was a Deltatherm 1000 thermoelastic stress measurement system [7]. This equipment has a set of
infra-red detectors arranged in a focal-plane array and represents a major improvement on the previous generation of
thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) systems, known as SPATE (Stress Pattern Analysis by Thermal Emission), which
relied on a single sensor scanning across the surface, since full-field measurements can be made in a few seconds,
compared to several hours with SPATE. Practically simultaneous temperature measurements can also be taken using
the Deltatherm. Due to the high temperature sensitivity of the Deltatherm infra red sensor material and the low
thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the glass/polyester blade material, thermoelastic stress measurements of the
blade surface are sensitive to spatial and temporal temperature variations. For this reason it was necessary to keep the
load amplitude to a minimum during the thermoelastic measurement campaigns.
Further details of the experimental procedure, including specific problems arising from applying TE techniques to
large structures undergoing fatigue testing in the laboratory, have been discussed in Paynter and Dutton [6]. These
include motion compensation, eradication of stray (heat) reflections, and the development of appropriate
methodological and analytical techniques to collect and process data from a full blade survey.
TSA was applied during the blade fatigue test on blade reference number 10f. The 4500 mm long blade was
constructed with an outer skin of hand lay-up glass/polyester, reinforced with two internal shear webs. The blade had
two deliberate flaws inserted into it during manufacture, namely a shear web disbond in the main structural spar
(created by leaving a piece of peel-ply between the shear web and compression side skin between 2000 and 2200
mm) and a trailing edge delamination in the maximum chord region between 900 and 1100 mm). The sinusoidal,
constant amplitude fatigue loading was applied via a wooden saddle at 3000 mm. The stress range for the basic test
was between 0.9 and 9.0 kN at 1 Hz, but this was reduced to a range of 0.3 to 3.0 kN during the thermoelastic stress
measurement campaigns in order both to reduce the influence of physical blade movement on the readings and, in
particular, to reduce viscoelastic heating effects in regions of high stress concentration (since the resulting steep
temperature gradients would cause incorrect thermoelastic stress measurements). The blade survived almost 4 million
cycles.
The overall surface temperature of the blade, the conventional thermoelastic stress distribution, and the 2nd harmonic
signal were measured at five approximately equi-spaced intervals during the test. The 2nd harmonic measurement
was created by supplying the Deltatherm's digital signal processing board with a sinusoidal frequency of twice the
load frequency created by a frequency generator, since the applied load had previously been demonstrated to conform
very well to a sinusoidal shape. The same result could have been achieved more rigorously by using a frequency-
doubling electronic circuit. The thermoelastic signal was treated by the Deltatherm digital signal processing board
and software exactly as usual, except that, of course, it was now correlated with an input load signal of twice the
actual frequency. A block diagram showing the main components of data collection and processing is shown in

Load

Load
cell Deltatherm
Frequency signal
doubling processing
circuit unit - correlates
Mirror temperature
and load signal
Deltatherm
infra red T
Load detector
saddle Infra red signal

Test blade To reaction frame

Figure 1.

Figure 1 : Diagrammatic representation of thermoelastic data collection and load signal processing
A software suite was written in Matlab to calibrate and post-process the data, including alignment of adjacent frames
against an outline of the blade plan.

3. Acoustic emission monitoring results

The most reliable and consistent results were obtained from AE monitoring of static tests. A series of increasing
magnitude maximum test loads (MTLs) were applied to the blades and then the occurrence of damage evaluated
using much lower magnitude acoustic emission examination loads (AELs). An overall static test procedure was then
developed for application in standard static maximum load tests (Figure 2).

Figure 2 : AEGIS static test load profile proposed for blade certification testing
Figure 3 : AEGIS blade test 7s: AE Events linear location history (x-position from blade root v. time) and
associated acoustic emission examination load (AEL) envelope
Figure 3 presents results from a blade with deliberately introduced damage, where 9 MTLs were applied to the blade
before final failure on application of the tenth MTL. The concatenated sequence of grouped AEL loads in Figure 3
excludes the MTLs and shows the located AE Events due to the AEL loads by position along the blade (y-axis). Note:
• Damaged areas at the root and at 1.1 - 1.2 m were located at very early stages
• The final failure area (initiated from a simulated delamination introduced during manufacture at 2.0-2.2 m) was
extremely emissive during the final set of AEL tests, immediately following the simulated MTL test to 20.75
kN. The data clearly warns of the impending failure (which occurred during the subsequent simulated MTL test
to 22.8 kN). At previous load stages there had been no significant linear location in this area.
AE monitoring of fatigue tests is more problematic due to the huge amount of data which might be collected. The
methodology used on earlier test blades in this series prescribed AE data collection only during the periodic (every
500,000 cycles) static tests and during more frequent (every 10,000 cycles) periods of slow cycles (Figure 4).
Unfortunately, this strategy did not reliably and consistently capture the initiation and growth of significant cracks in
the blades, presumably because the damage events were occurring during the fast cycles, implying that the effect of
loading rate is more significant than that of dwell-time at peak load. The procedure was modified to include logging
only during the peak 10% of load cycles (Figure 4) with improved but still somewhat inconclusive results.

after 5 kcycles: after 500 kcycles: EL block

(10 cycles) (10 cycles)
Load

Time on test

90% of max parametrics all AE signals

Load

Time on test

Figure 4 : AEGIS final fatigue test load envelope showing periods when AE Hits monitoring initiated
 AE sensors

Figure 5 : AEGIS blade test 10f: AE Energy linear location history (x-position v. number of cycles)
As Figure 5 shows, for blade 10f of the small blade test sequence, a sizeable “dead band” occurred between sensors 4
and 5 in the location of the deliberately introduced shear web debond (2.0-2.2 m). This “dead band” may of itself be
indicative of damage (due to modification of the signal transmission paths through the blade directly attributable to
the shear web debond). The peak AE Energy signals are located in the blade root area (at 0.2 m) where some early but
non-critical delamination damage was verified by visual observation (through the clear gel coat) and at 2.5 m, where
no damage was found even after extensive post-failure examination. The implication must be that the linear location
algorithm has incorrectly located the major damage occurring at 2.05 m to the areas between sensors 3 and 4 and
particularly between sensors 5 and 6 due to a blockage (or overlong signal path) causing no correctly phased signal to
be detected by sensors 4 and 5 (as required for correct linear location).

4. Thermoelastic stress measurement results

The TSA measurements were also carried out on blade 10f.

AE sensors

Figure 6 : Composite plot of normalised thermoelastic stress distribution on blade 10f near start of test
The trailing edge flaw grew very early in the test and then stabilised, while the shear web disbond was visible right
from the start as a thermoelastic stress "hot" spot (Figure 6). Several further cracks initiated in the foam-filled trailing
edge part of the blade during the course of the test.

Figure 7 : Composite plot of normalised thermoelastic stress distribution on blade 10f near start of test showing
cracks detected at locations 2040, 1850, 1570, 1220, and 1010 mm from the blade root and
delamination in the root stock

Artificial shear Induced trailing

web debond edge delamination

Final failure at point of highest Final extent of

signal amplitude damage

Additional sub-critical delamination

damage in root section

Figure 8 : Composite plot of second harmonic thermoelastic stress distribution on blade 10f near start of test
showing cracks detected at locations 2040, 1850, 1570, 1220, and 1010 mm from the blade root,
delamination in the root stock, and trailing edge damage
Figure 7 shows the thermoelastic stress distribution measured shortly before final failure. The blade root is at the right
of the picture and the leading edge at the base; the blade plan form can be easily distinguished. The picture is
complicated by the "noise" of acoustic emission sensors arranged along the quarter-chord line and strain gauges and
associated wiring. The main stress is carried by the spar along the leading edge. The outlined black rectangle to the
middle-left of the picture encloses the foam-filled trailing edge section in which three discrete cracks are visible (at
1570, 1850, and 2040 mm). The crack at 2040 mm ultimately propagated through the stress concentration above the
shear web disbond (see white linear feature immediately to the right of the strain gauge and black linear marker at
2100 mm), causing failure of the blade. Additional delamination damage was visible in the blade root area; this was
typical of all blades tested and did not appear to cause a structural problem.
Close, visual inspection of the cracks in the trailing edge sandwich part of the blade revealed flexing of the blade
skin, as if local, small scale buckling was taking place. These flexures appeared to give rise to surface movements
with a frequency higher than that of the test load. To test this hypothesis, a test signal was generated with twice the
applied load frequency and correlated with the TSA signal. Surprisingly, this procedure not only identified the
cracked areas in the foam-filled sandwich area, but also successfully identified the root delaminations, and trailing
edge crack, and at the same time removed most of the signal noise.
The second harmonic thermoelastic stress plot for the blade (Figure 8) successfully highlights all the damaged areas
(dark features) and it can be argued further that the plot indicates the severity of damage at the (propagating) crack
located at 2040 mm, since the signal strength is highest at this flaw. Further discussion of these results can be found
in Paynter and Dutton [6].

5. Conclusions
• Methodologies have been developed for the application of AE monitoring and thermoelastic stress analysis
during full-scale static (AE only) and fatigue tests on wind turbine blades.
• AE examination loads have correctly identified areas damaged by previously applied static maximum test loads.
• A novel thermoelastic stress analysis technique has been developed which identified all damaged areas in a test
blade and for which the signal magnitude appeared proportional to damage severity.
• The techniques work independently of each other. Thermoelastic stress analysis can be used to verify the overall
stress distribution at the blade surface as well as to detect developing damage. Acoustic emission monitoring
specifically detects damage, but requires a large sensor array due to signal attenuation in the blade material.

Acknowledgements
The tests reported here were carried out on a blade manufactured by Geobiologiki S.A. during the project Acoustic
emission proof testing and damage assessment of wind turbine blades (AEGIS) supported by the EC Non-nuclear
Energy Programme under contract number JOR3-CT98-0283. The acoustic emission measurements were carried out
in association with the other AEGIS partners: Pantelis Vionis and Denja Lekou at Centre for Renewable Energy
Sources (CRES), Greece; Don van Delft and Peter Joosse at the Knowledge Centre WMC, then at TU Delft,
Netherlands; Nassos Anastassopoulos and Dimitrios Kouroussis at Envirocoustics Abee, Greece; Theo Kossivas at
Geobiologiki S.A., Greece; Theodore Philippidis at University of Patras, Greece; Gerard Fernando at Cranfield
University, UK; and Alain Proust at Euro Physical Acoustics S.A., France. The thermoelastic stress measurements
were funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and were carried out by the
author and Dr Robert Paynter, then of the Energy Research Unit at RAL.

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