An Improved FMECA Method for Wind Turbines Health Management

In this paper, an improved Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) method for wind turbine reliability investigation is proposed.According to previous work, the main deficiencies of Risk Priority Number (RPN) based criticality analysis are presented.For the qualitative analysis, failure modes and main causes of a gearbox are analyzed on subcomponents level with available data.After that, inspection approaches are provided and mitigation methods are recommended from both design and maintenance stage.For criticality analysis, another index, Probable Profit Loss (PPL) is created and all the parameters are carefully defined to overcome the limits of conventional RNP method.Moreover, to make PPL applicable for maintenance tasks, different maintenance types are considered for profit loss calculation.The criticality rank shows the efficiency of the index and can be used as reference for making maintenance schedules.