Application of BSTRAIN Software for Wind Turbine Blade Testing

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) currently operates the largest structural testing facility in the United States dedicated to the testing of wind turbine blades. Recently, a completely new data acquisition system was developed to measure blade response and monitor test status. The system is based on a National Instruments (NI) software package, LabVIEW, and NI hardware components.The NREL custom program is called BSTRAIN (Blade Structural Test Real-time Acquisition Interface Network). The objectives of the new software were to develop a robust, easy-to-use computer program that could automatically collect data from static and fatigue blade tests without missing any significant events or overloading the computer system with excess data. The program currently accepts inputfrom up to 32 channels, but can be expanded to over 1000 channels. In order to reduce the large amount of data collected during long fatigue tests, several options for real-time data processing were developed including peak-valley series collection, peak-valley decimation, block decimation, and the option for continuous data recording of all data. Other features of BSTRAIN include automatedblade stiffness checks, remote terminal access to blade test status, and automated VCR control for continuous test recording. Results from the tests conducted with the software have revealed areas for improvement including test accuracy, post-processing analysis, and further data reduction.