Application of Virtual Sensing to Offshore Wind Energy Converters with Jacket Substructures

Maximilian Henkel, Jan Häfele, Alexandros Iliopoulos, Wout Weijtjens, Raimund Rolfes

Research output: Unpublished contribution to conferencePoster

Abstract

Structural fatigue is supposed to be the main design driver for offshore wind turbines (OWT). Aiming at jacket substructures for OWT's, steel lattice constructions, fatigue critical welds can be found due to combined dynamic loading from wind, waves and power supply. Inspections are costly because of poor accessibility of the mostly under water located jacket welds. Moreover, equipping every weld with sensors is impracticable because of the vast number of welds. Therefore, Virtual Sensing estimates jacket fatigue using the accelerometers on the tower. This concept predicts current fatigue critical welds based on pointwise reproducing fatigue history and is already successfully applied to the welds of offshore wind turbines on monopiles substructures. The spatial estimation is performed by real-time tower measurements and extrapolation to any desired jacket location. Gathered information about fatigue-critical locations leads to a better assumption of structural health and supports maintenance measures. For example can the need of corrosion painting or inspections be backed or rejected. Overall virtual sensing will allow planning inspections more case-based, which is seen as an increase of efficiency and decrease of risk.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2017
EventOffshore Wind Energy - London ExCel, London, United Kingdom
Duration: 6 Jun 20178 Jun 2017
http://offshorewind2017.com/conference

Conference

ConferenceOffshore Wind Energy
Abbreviated titleOWE
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period6/06/178/06/17
Internet address

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Application of Virtual Sensing to Offshore Wind Energy Converters with Jacket Substructures'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this