Tensile Damage Study of Wind Turbine Tower Material Q345 Based on an Acoustic Emission Method

As essential load-bearing equipment to support the nacelle and blades, the tower is subjected to the whole wind turbine loading. This study proposes a new method of combining acoustic emission and normalized accumulation parameters to characterize wind turbine towers Q345 steel damage. First of all, tendency analysis of the acoustic emission signal parameter was conducted to determine damage degree during the damage stage. Secondly, we normalized the accumulation of amplitude and other parameters to compare the proportion of each accumulation parameter at different stages, while studying the spectra of common acoustic emission signals. Finally, comparing the differences and similarities of the normalized accumulation parameters between three different rates, we analyze the effect of rate on the normalized accumulation parameters. These results indicate that the normalized cumulative duration parameter is suitable for characterizing the yield damage occurrence, the normalized cumulative energy parameter is very sensitive to the fracture stage, the normalized cumulative energy parameter is least influenced by the loading rate, and the energy parameter is a sensitivity factor for normalized expression, which to realizes the stage of damage judgment.