Structural Health Monitoring for Offshore Wind Turbine Towers and Foundations

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of wind turbines can be used for verification and investigation of uncertainties in design, as well as provide input for possible future design optimization. It may also provide early warning of degradation. This allows for condition-based maintenance and status evaluation for possible lifetime extension or changed operational conditions (for example turbine modifications). SHM monitoring applications include environmental loads, corrosion, natural frequencies and damping characteristics of foundations, stress concentrations, deformation, fatigue cycles, foundation scour, seabed stiffness, pore pressure and settlement. Benefits of SHM are described with examples of case studies where monitoring made an important contribution to design improvements. Advantages of integrated monitoring solutions are outlined where an intelligent combination of sensors can provide information of linked parameters and overall assessment of the structural health Recommendations and examples of monitoring systems are described. These cover different foundation types with emphasis on the most significant monitoring aspects for the design of each foundation type. This paper and the detailed report to BSEE provide useful guidelines on structural health monitoring of offshore wind turbine foundations where relevant industry standards presently are missing.

Influence of soil–structure modelling techniques on offshore wind turbine monopile structural response

“…The springs supported models can still be applied in the design of OWT monopiles, but this would require significant deviation from current springs force-stiffness calculation and instead rely heavily on calibration using both the mass soil model and measured monitoring data to verify, F I G U R E 9 Three-dimensional mass soil and springs-supported models buckling investigate, and correct uncertainties in the design. 19 Engineering justification and benefit for undertaking the design and analysis using this method can be made on the grounds of reducing computational costs and improving efficiency considering the sheer number of modelling iterations, improvements, loading conditions, and combinations required for the complete structural design of OWT monopiles. 17 The following conclusions can be drawn from the investigation:…”

A Framework and Baseline for the Integration of a Sustainable Circular Economy in Offshore Wind

“…The scientific literature harbours sixteen publications on offshore wind and lifetime extension (search in Table 3), all of which appear relevant upon scanning the abstracts (Figure 3). The articles primarily discuss structural health monitoring and fatigue assessments [180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193], data systems [194] and decision-making to either extend the lifetime, repower or decommission [195], aligning well with alternative circular economy terminologies suggested during the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult workshop (Table 2), such as "digital twin" and "residual strength determination". Alternative searches (Table 3) rendering significant results are "fatigue life" (190 publications) and "remaining life" (17), suggesting that these are more common terms than "lifetime extension" within the offshore wind community.…”