Project overview
Growth in the European wind energy market has led to the manufacture of larger turbines (~ 7.5 MW). There are several challenges associated with these turbines, particularly offshore, e.g., vibrations/ damage of the flexible blades, mechanical drives/electric converters. These raise maintenance concerns and result in operational downtime, impacting on power systems and supply reliability. For these reasons there have been huge R&D investments creating the requirement for highly trained manpower in Europe.
The SYSWIND network trains future engineers and scientists in truly multi-disciplinary and newly emerging scientific areas and technologies for next generation wind turbines. There are six research themes: new structural health monitoring (SHM), wireless sensor network (WSN), multi-body systems (including aerodynamics and geotechnics), semi-active vibration control, composite materials and power system modelling. In addition, complementary non-scientific training such as on commercialisation and IPRs will be provided to enhance the career prospects of the researchers.
Besides sixleading Universities from Europe, the network includes (A) 1 SME specialised in R&D for wind turbines and geotechnics as full partner, (B) 4 companies training 7 researchers on WSN, vibration control and wind energy trading, (C) additional partners transferring complementary skills geared towards wind energy specialists, and (D) world class research groups such as from Stanford in the US, pioneers in the research fields addressed.
The strong involvement of the industry will shape the training needs of the researchers and increase their employability. The association with the leading experts will aid the career development of the researchers and raise their profile. The network has the potential to establish new mutually-recognized inter-institutional courses jointly with industry partners, and thus strengthen the growth and competiveness of the wind energy sector.
Project objectives
To reach the overall objective, the research has the following specific objectives, to:
- Develop new time-series and signal processing based identification techniques, which are suitable with uncertainties (both noise and model) and time varying situations.
- Develop combined strategies based on high- low frequency signals and smart sensors to detect appropriate damage.
- Develop WSN based protocol for health monitoring and control of wind turbines.
- Develop multibody based efficient numerical models for system identification and for modelling damage in blades and validate with test data from a real turbine blade.
- Identify aerodynamic loads on turbine during unsteady aerodynamic conditions.
- Develop finite element (FE) based modelling of foundations to account for blade-tower coupling and soil-structure interaction.
- Develop time-frequency based semi-active vibration control strategies using liquid dampers to control tower/nacelle, blade vibrations under time varying parameters/conditions.
- Develop semi-active control strategies for the stabilization of offshore turbines.
- Develop fracture mechanics based model for damage in laminate composites for application to optimized design.
Innovation
Currently, the structural/mechanical systems monitoring is carried out either offline or initially during installation. Thus, the lack of online health monitoring facilities leads to increased downtime for the turbine and decreased life span of the components (e.g., blades, drives, power electronic converters) of the wind turbine. This makes wind turbines a less reliable source of power generation as compared to conventional sources (e.g. coal or gas). The proposed project is an unprecedented cross-disciplinary (mechanical, civil, electrical engineering and computer science) effort to understand the role played by cutting edge technologies such as smart materials and damage mechanics, signal processing and semi-active controls along with emerging technologies such as WSN in shaping the wind turbine technology as a competitive alternative and renewable energy generator in an area where Europe is a growing market.