As more offshore wind parks are commissioned, the focus will inevitably shift from a planning, construction, and warranty focus to an operation, maintenance, and investment payback focus. In this latter case, both short-term risks associated with wind turbine component assemblies, and long-term risks related to integrity of the support structure, are highly important. This research focuses on the role of condition monitoring to lower costs and risks associated with short-term reliability and long-term asset integrity. This enables comparative estimates of the life cycle costs and reduction in uncertainty, both of which are of value to investors.
This paper establishes the model basis regarding the ultimate limit state consisting of structural, loading, and probabilistic models of the support structure of offshore wind energy converters together with a sensitivity study. The model basis is part of a risk based assessment and monitoring framework and will be applied for establishing the 'as designed and constructed' reliability as prior information for the assessment and as a basis for designing a monitoring system. The model basis is derived considering the constitutive physical equations and the methodology of solving these which then in combination with the ultimate limit state requirements leads to the specific constitutive relations. As a result finite element models based on shell elements incorporating a structural and a loading model are introduced and described in detail. Applying these models the ultimate capacity of the support structure and the tripod structure are determined with a geometrically and materially nonlinear finite element analysis. The observed failure mechanisms are the basis for the definition of the ultimate limit state responses. A probabilistic model accounting for the uncertainties involved is derived on the basis of literature review and measurement data from a prototype Multibrid M5000 support structure. In combination with the developed structural and loading models, sensitivity analyses in regard to the responses are performed to enhance the understanding and to refine the developed models. To this end, as the developed models necessitate substantial numerical efforts for the probabilistic response analysis predetermined designs of numerical experiments are applied for the calculation of the sensitivities using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient. With this quantification of the sensitivity of the random variables on the responses including nonlinearity the refinement of the model is performed on a quantitative basis.
Structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades by strain measurement and vibration analysis
(2011)
Wind turbine blades have to withstand a high number of load cycles in mostly hard weather conditions over 20 years. In a research project BAM and several partners have designed, evaluated and tested a condition monitoring system for all parts of a wind turbine. At a rotorblade with a length of 58 m fibre bragg grating sensors were applied for in-service strain measurement. Additionally a complex test rig was designed to enable real biaxial loading conditions at a representative test rotor blade to simulate the mechanical loading conditions in the lab. In this test blade with a length of 8 m also fibre bragg grating sensors were implemented to determine their influences for the structure and the condition monitoring system. Vibration measurements were carried out at different test phases. The results were compared with finite element strain and modal analysis.