On-Line Real-Time Diagnosis System and Method for Wind Turbine Blade (WTB) Damage

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, Nov. 30 -- INNER MONGOLIA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Hohhot, New Mexico has been assigned a patent (No. US 11514567 B2, initially filed June 16, 2020) developed by three inventors Chaoyi Dong, Hohhot, China; Xiaoyi Zhao, Hohhot, China; and Xiaoyan Chen, Hohhot, China, for "On-line real-time diagnosis system and method for wind turbine blade (WTB) damage."

The present invention provides an on-line real-time diagnosis system and method for wind turbine blade (WTB) damage. The system includes a four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a cloud database, and a computer system. The four-rotor UAV captures images of WTBs in real time, and transmits the images to the computer system. The cloud database stores an image library used for a Visual Geometry Group (VGG)-19 net image classification method, where an image in the image library stored in the cloud database is dynamically captured from a network. The computer system is used to perform training by using the image library to obtain an improved VGG-19 net image classification method, and classify, by using the improved VGG-19 net image classification method, the images of the WTBs received from the four-rotor UAV, to obtain a WTB damage diagnosis and classification result and a damage grading result.