Large off-shore wind energy plants represent a big technical challenge with respect to design, construction and operation. The knowledge about the structural loads resulting from wind and especially from water waves and the resulting material stresses is not yet fully developed. Furthermore, at the present time there are many open questions concerning the design of a safe and economic foundation of off-shore wind energy plants. It is a matter of fact that downtime of the plant for extended repair and maintenance resulting from undiscovered damage can lead to big economical loss. For this reasons there is a need to develop powerful monitoring and data evaluation systems which give the operator necessary and reliable information about the plant’s state and allows the initiation of maintenance actions.
Aim of the Project The central objective of the project is to develop the hard- and software for an integral monitoring and evaluation system with regard to condition-based maintenance and early damage detection of the whole system includ-ing rotor blades, machine (bearings, gears), tower and foundation.
Other subtasks include: - Experimental investigation of the real loads from wind and water
- Investigation of damage evolution and fatigue of composite material as they are used for the rotor blades
- Application and testing of new sensor technologies like fibreoptic and piezoelectric sensors for the longterm monitoring under off-shore conditions
- Development of guide-lines for the certification of monitoring systems
The project is sponsored by the German Ministry of Economics and Labour within the Innovative Networks (InnoNet) program. The consortium includes the Fed. Inst. of Material Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin and industries specialized on hard- and software, sensors, diagnostics and off-shore wind energy technology.
