Wind Turbines Structural Health Monitoring Using a FMCW Radar Mounted on a Drone

Wind turbine inspections are essential to maintain and enhance operation and longevity. Nonetheless, regular preemptive checks present challenges related to price, workers' safety, and prolonged downtime periods and are performed less often than necessary most of the time. Microwave/ millimeter-wave radars are an emerging noncontact technology used in structural health monitoring that can extract valuable features from a long range. Since wind turbines' dimensions have increased over the past years, drones with cameras are being used to optimize the inspection. This paper analyses the feasibility of using radars mounted on drones for structural health monitoring inspection of wind turbines. Experiments using a Doppler radar pointing at a windmill were carried out to verify the feasibility of the approach, and simulations were performed using an FMCW radar in a more complex scenario, taking into consideration changes in speed and yaw movement of the turbine, achieving a complete noncontact analysis of the turbine movement.