Radar-based sensing of wind turbines blades based on 35 GHz FMCW sensors installed at operational wind turbine towers

The dataset contains radar-based measurements of rotor blades from three operational wind turbines as part of a structural health monitoring system. For this purpose, a sensor box with a 35 GHz radar sensor (about 1 000 measurements per second) and a camera system (about 100 images per second), is mounted on each wind turbine tower at approximately 100 m height. In order to distinguish individual rotor blades, a machine-readable marker printed on a self-adhesive film was applied on the blade’s surface. When a rotor blade passes the sensor, the camera captures an image of the marker while the radar records a measurement. The marker is then identified and the recorded data is assigned to a particular rotor blade. The measurements demonstrate that the damage detection methodology can be transferred to an image processing problem. The challenge is to manage the strong influence from variable environmental and operational conditions, e.g. wind speed, azimuth orientation, that modify the rotor blade appearance in the radargram significantly. The dataset contains measurements from the intact turbine blade conditions, because it was not possible to introduce structural damage.