Practical online condition monitoring of gearbox oil using non-dispersive infra-red sensors

A study has been carried out on the feasibility of using nondispersive infra-red (NDIR) analysis for online condition monitoring of the degradation of wind turbine gearbox oil. In particular, the effects of varying the size of the gap through which the oil flows was analysed, with considerably larger gaps of 1-3mm used than reported elsewhere. Due to the high viscosity of gearbox oil, a large gap size is desirable for online monitoring. Old and new oil were found to produce a different output from the detector, suggesting that online condition monitoring of oil using NDIR is viable with large gap sizes, although the largest gap size produced some anomalous results.