TY - CONF A1 - Thiele, Marc A1 - Baeßler, Matthias T1 - Fatigue crack detection methods for high-cyclic loaded steel structures and challenges in mechanical testing N2 - For the generation of renewable energy offshore wind farms play an important role. The majority of these wind generators are connected to steel foundation structures. Steady increasing power output of these wind turbines leads to new challenges as well for engineers of the related support structures. Caused by the high-cyclic loading of these structures by wind and waves fatigue plays a very important role. Besides the consideration of fatigue within the design process it is additionally an important topic and challenge to monitor the existing steel structures relating to potential fatigue cracks occurring during their lifetime. This plays a role for a fundamental understanding of mechanisms as investigated in testing but also for inspection in real structures. Since the structures of the offshore wind generators are very large and in addition partially under water effective and reliable methods for fatigue crack detection are required. This contribution will present results of recent investigations on different crack detection methods applied on high-cycle fatigue tests on small welded steel samples as well as on welded steel components. The comparison of these measurements will show what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods and which method is potentially more suitable for the application on real offshore wind structures. It is outlined where challenges for detection methods exist. Furthermore, in this context the resulting challenges for the execution of material testing especially caused by the increasing dimensions of wind energy converters will by exemplarily presented. T2 - EERA JP Wind & SETWind Online Annual Event 2020 CY - Online meeting DA - 14.09.2020 KW - Fatigue KW - Crack detection KW - Steel structures PY - 2020 AN - OPUS4-51356 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -