Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbines Using a Digital Image Correlation System on a UAV

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently emerged as a robust tool for remote inspection and data acquisition at places that are either inaccessible or riskier to perform measurements. To quantify the level of strain/stress and loading conditions that the rotating structures such as wind turbine experience during operation, an approach is proposed that can perform a nondestructive evaluation of these rotating structures using non-contact, three-dimensional (3D) digital image correlation (DIC). This technique addresses the benefit of non-interference with structure functionality and can be used for rotating or non-rotating structures. In this project, a synchronized set of a stereo camera system is used to acquire the images of a rotating turbine. These images are processed to obtain displacement, geometry, and strain over the wind turbine blades during deformation.