Abstract: In view of the wind power equipment developing rapidly but lacking effective monitoring and diagnosis methods, the research status and problems worth studying are pointed out. The current situation, fault features and diagnostic difficulties of wind turbines are summarized. The installed capacity and scale of wind turbines are enlarging year by year, but currently on-line diagnosis system of wind turbine based on vibration monitoring is still a blank. The economic benefits of wind power are seriously affected by operation and maintenance costs as well as huge losses caused by frequent accidents of wind turbine. The research situation of the existing condition monitoring and fault diagnosis methods for the main failure components of wind turbines are introduced, such as gear boxes, generators and blades. According to the characteristics of wind turbines working in the condition of variable speed, unstable loads, etc., the research emphasis should be the failure mechanism, specific diagnostic methods of the new-type equipment, online condition monitoring and fault diagnosis systems suitable for the characteristics of wind turbines.

Key words: Blade, Condition monitoring, Fault diagnosis, Gearbox, Generator, Wind turbines