- Offshore wind energy plays a crucial role in achieving a carbon dioxide free industrial sector in the coming decades. However, foundation systems for offshore wind turbines significantly impact the overall installation process, posing technical and regulatory challenges. Adopting lightweight design principles in steel construction such as dissolved load bearing structures in jacket foundations offers substantial potential for reducing resource consumption, particularly steel usage. This presentation explores the complete digitalization of welding manufacturing and testing processes, enabling fully automated production and data driven quality assessment of tubular nodes, which are vital components of jacket foundations. The study also investigates the relationship between seam geometry and fatigue strength inspired by bionic design principles. The results demonstrate that tubular nodes can be welded entirely automatically, accommodating geometric tolerances, and that seam geometries caOffshore wind energy plays a crucial role in achieving a carbon dioxide free industrial sector in the coming decades. However, foundation systems for offshore wind turbines significantly impact the overall installation process, posing technical and regulatory challenges. Adopting lightweight design principles in steel construction such as dissolved load bearing structures in jacket foundations offers substantial potential for reducing resource consumption, particularly steel usage. This presentation explores the complete digitalization of welding manufacturing and testing processes, enabling fully automated production and data driven quality assessment of tubular nodes, which are vital components of jacket foundations. The study also investigates the relationship between seam geometry and fatigue strength inspired by bionic design principles. The results demonstrate that tubular nodes can be welded entirely automatically, accommodating geometric tolerances, and that seam geometries ca n be precisely manufactured according to suggestions from e.g. numerical models or other sources . These advancements significantly enhance the fatigue strength and service life of offshore wind turbine support structures.…

