UAV-Based Thermographic Inspection of Wind Turbine Blades for Structural Integrity Assessment: Preliminary Findings

The maintenance of a wind turbine blade can be an expensive endeavour, not only because of the labour, time and danger involved but even more so since it requires production downtime to perform a visual assessment of the blades’ condition. This manuscript describes a non-intrusive inspection strategy for the evaluation of wind turbine blade structural integrity, employing thermographic analysis facilitated by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This approach harnesses the capabilities of microbolometer-based thermography to discern variations in heat transfer that are representative of underlying structural defects. The core methodology involves capturing thermal imagery at a lower temperature, the warming of the blade’s surface and subsequently another thermal imagery capture. Field validation of the proposed inspection methodology was undertaken utilizing a DJI Matrice 300 RTK UAV equipped with a DJI H20T camera. This equipment setup was deployed at a wind turbine site in Northern Portugal, facilitating the acquisition of thermal and visible light imagery under varied thermal conditions. The empirical data gathered from these operations, particularly the comparison of thermal profiles captured at different times of the day, provided a dataset for analysis. This allowed for the detection of thermal anomalies consistent with possible structural defects. The adaptability of this method to the demands of offshore wind farm operations illuminates its potential to revolutionize the maintenance protocols for wind turbines situated in these particularly challenging environments.