TY - GEN A1 - Thiele, Marc T1 - Comparison of fatigue crack detection methods for high-cyclic loaded steel structures N2 - At present, to produce renewable energy offshore wind farms play an important role. The available space combined with the more valuable wind conditions make offshore locations very attractive for wind powered energy production. In Europe a significant number of offshore wind farms already exist, especially in the North and Baltic Sea. In future this trend will continue, and further offshore wind farms will be built. The majority of offshore wind turbines are mounted on steel foundation structures. Due to the high-cyclic loading by wind and waves fatigue stress plays a substantial role regarding structural safety. Besides the consideration of fatigue within the design process, to monitor existing steel structures for potential fatigue cracks during their life time is a major topic and a challenge. For the structures of the offshore wind turbines are large and partially under water effective reliable methods for the detection of fatigue cracks are required. This contribution presents investigations on different crack detection methods applied at high-cycle fatigue tests on small-scale welded steel samples as well as on large-scale welded steel components. The tests were conducted at the BAM laboratories. For crack detection mainly three different methods were used and compared. The first method regards to the measurement of strain by conventionally strain gauges. Secondly, the crack luminescence was used as a new and effective optical method for surface monitoring. And finally, crack detection by pressure differentials of the inner and outer section of tubular steel elements was investigated. A comparison study will emphasize the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods and show which of the described methods is potentially more suitable for an application on real offshore wind structures. T2 - 5th International Conference on Smart Monitoring, Assessment and Rehabilitation of Civil Structures CY - Potsdam, Germany DA - 27.08.2019 KW - Fatigue KW - Steel structures KW - Crack detection PY - 2019 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/48944 AN - OPUS4-48944 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany