Vibration-based monitoring of a small-scale wind turbine blade under varying climate conditions. Part I: An experimental benchmark.

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has been increasingly exploited in recent years as a valuable tool for assessing performance throughout the life cycle of structural systems, as well as for supporting decision-making and maintenance planning. Although a great assortment of SHM methods has been developed, only a limited number of studies exist serving as reference basis for the comparison of different techniques. In this paper, the vibration-based assessment of a small-scale wind turbine (WT) blade is experimentally investigated, with the aim of establishing a benchmark case study for the SHM community. The structure under consideration, provided by Sonkyo Energy as part of the Windspot 3.5 kW WT model, is tested in both healthy and damaged states under varying environmental, that is, temperature, conditions as imposed by means of a climatic chamber. This study offers a thorough documentation of the configuration of this experimental benchmark, including the types of deployed sensors, the nature of excitation and available measurements, and the investigated damage scenarios and environmental variations enforced. Lastly, an overview of the raw and processed measurement data, made available to researchers via an open access Zenodo repository, is herein provided.