Detection of wind turbine hub bolt drop noise based on fusion acoustic features classification

Abstract

Hub bolt failures in wind turbines can lead to severe equipment damage and significant economic losses due to downtime and maintenance costs. In this study, a classification method named CAMPPlus is proposed. This method introduces an innovative multi-scale feature fusion strategy that integrates Mel-spectrogram, MFCC, and STFT features through weighted feature fusion. The method is validated on the UrbanSound8K dataset, achieving a classification accuracy of 96.2%, with a 95% confidence interval of [96.1%, 96.8%], demonstrating strong robustness in noisy environments. Subsequently, the model is applied to a custom measurement dataset containing hub noise and bolt failure sounds collected from operational wind turbines. On this dataset, the model achieves a classification accuracy of 99.7%, with a 95% confidence interval of [99.5%, 99.8%]. Furthermore, the method’s high classification performance is validated under varying environmental noise conditions. By enabling early fault detection in wind turbines, this method contributes to reducing downtime and maintenance costs while improving operational efficiency. The proposed solution not only enhances the reliability and cost-effectiveness of wind turbine maintenance but also provides a scalable approach for continuous health monitoring, thereby promoting reliable and sustainable wind turbine operation in industrial settings.