scholarly journals Smart Wireless sensors for Impairment detection of the offshore Wind Turbines

Author(s):  
Dr. Ranganathan G. ◽  
Dr. Smys S.

The maintenance of Wind farms located in the off shores are highly challenging as the preservation and the operational availability are tedious. The insufficiency in the traditional system for monitoring the conditions of the wind turbines located in the off shores has made this topic an attractive area of research. The proposed method in the paper utilizes the multiple intelligent smart sensors to detect the impairments in the structure of the wind turbines. The sensors utilized in the proposed method estimates the damage index in the wind turbine by engaging the embedded software. The effectiveness of the proposed method was measured by applying it to the off shore wind turbines. The results obtained evinces the minimized cost and the down time in maintaining the off shore wind farms.

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongyan Ding ◽  
Zuntao Feng ◽  
Puyang Zhang ◽  
Conghuan Le ◽  
Yaohua Guo

The composite bucket foundation (CBF) for offshore wind turbines is the basis for a one-step integrated transportation and installation technique, which can be adapted to the construction and development needs of offshore wind farms due to its special structural form. To transport and install bucket foundations together with the upper portion of offshore wind turbines, a non-self-propelled integrated transportation and installation vessel was designed. In this paper, as the first stage of applying the proposed one-step integrated construction technique, the floating behavior during the transportation of CBF with a wind turbine tower for the Xiangshui wind farm in the Jiangsu province was monitored. The influences of speed, wave height, and wind on the floating behavior of the structure were studied. The results show that the roll and pitch angles remain close to level during the process of lifting and towing the wind turbine structure. In addition, the safety of the aircushion structure of the CBF was verified by analyzing the measurement results for the interaction force and the depth of the liquid within the bucket. The results of the three-DOF (degree of freedom) acceleration monitoring on the top of the test tower indicate that the wind turbine could meet the specified acceleration value limits during towing.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3496
Author(s):  
Subhamoy Bhattacharya ◽  
Suryakanta Biswal ◽  
Muhammed Aleem ◽  
Sadra Amani ◽  
Athul Prabhakaran ◽  
...  

Large scale offshore wind farms are relatively new infrastructures and are being deployed in regions prone to earthquakes. Offshore wind farms comprise of both offshore wind turbines (OWTs) and balance of plants (BOP) facilities, such as inter-array and export cables, grid connection etc. An OWT structure can be either grounded systems (rigidly anchored to the seabed) or floating systems (with tension legs or catenary cables). OWTs are dynamically-sensitive structures made of a long slender tower with a top-heavy mass, known as Nacelle, to which a heavy rotating mass (hub and blades) is attached. These structures, apart from the variable environmental wind and wave loads, may also be subjected to earthquake related hazards in seismic zones. The earthquake hazards that can affect offshore wind farm are fault displacement, seismic shaking, subsurface liquefaction, submarine landslides, tsunami effects and a combination thereof. Procedures for seismic designing OWTs are not explicitly mentioned in current codes of practice. The aim of the paper is to discuss the seismic related challenges in the analysis and design of offshore wind farms and wind turbine structures. Different types of grounded and floating systems are considered to evaluate the seismic related effects. However, emphasis is provided on Tension Leg Platform (TLP) type floating wind turbine. Future research needs are also identified.


2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sclavounos

Wind is a rapidly growing renewable energy source, increasing at an annual rate of 30%, with the vast majority of wind power generated from onshore wind farms. The growth of these facilities, however, is limited by the lack of inexpensive land near major population centers and the visual impact caused by large wind turbines.Wind energy generated from floating offshore wind farms is the next frontier. Vast sea areas with stronger and steadier winds are available for wind farm development and 5 MW wind turbine towers located 20 miles from the coastline are invisible. Current offshore wind turbines are supported by monopoles driven into the seafloor or other bottom mounted structures at coastal sites a few miles from shore and in water depths of 10-15 m. The primary impediment to their growth is their prohibitive cost as the water depth increases.This article discusses the technologies and the economics associated with the development of motion resistant floating offshore wind turbines drawing upon a seven-year research effort at MIT. Two families of floater concepts are discussed, inspired by developments in the oil and gas industry for the deep water exploration of hydrocarbon reservoirs. The interaction of the floater response dynamics in severe weather with that of the wind turbine system is addressed and the impact of this coupling on the design of the new generation of multi-megawatt wind turbines for offshore deployment is discussed. The primary economic drivers affecting the development of utility scale floating offshore wind farms are also addressed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 574
Author(s):  
Rundong Yan ◽  
Sarah Dunnett

In order to improve the operation and maintenance (O&M) of offshore wind turbines, a new Petri net (PN)-based offshore wind turbine maintenance model is developed in this paper to simulate the O&M activities in an offshore wind farm. With the aid of the PN model developed, three new potential wind turbine maintenance strategies are studied. They are (1) carrying out periodic maintenance of the wind turbine components at different frequencies according to their specific reliability features; (2) conducting a full inspection of the entire wind turbine system following a major repair; and (3) equipping the wind turbine with a condition monitoring system (CMS) that has powerful fault detection capability. From the research results, it is found that periodic maintenance is essential, but in order to ensure that the turbine is operated economically, this maintenance needs to be carried out at an optimal frequency. Conducting a full inspection of the entire wind turbine system following a major repair enables efficient utilisation of the maintenance resources. If periodic maintenance is performed infrequently, this measure leads to less unexpected shutdowns, lower downtime, and lower maintenance costs. It has been shown that to install the wind turbine with a CMS is helpful to relieve the burden of periodic maintenance. Moreover, the higher the quality of the CMS, the more the downtime and maintenance costs can be reduced. However, the cost of the CMS needs to be considered, as a high cost may make the operation of the offshore wind turbine uneconomical.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2862
Author(s):  
Amer Al-Hinai ◽  
Yassine Charabi ◽  
Seyed H. Aghay Kaboli

Despite the long shoreline of Oman, the wind energy industry is still confined to onshore due to the lack of knowledge about offshore wind potential. A spatial-temporal wind data analysis is performed in this research to find the locations in Oman’s territorial seas with the highest potential for offshore wind energy. Thus, wind data are statistically analyzed for assessing wind characteristics. Statistical analysis of wind data include the wind power density, and Weibull scale and shape factors. In addition, there is an estimation of the possible energy production and capacity factor by three commercial offshore wind turbines suitable for 80 up to a 110 m hub height. The findings show that offshore wind turbines can produce at least 1.34 times more energy than land-based and nearshore wind turbines. Additionally, offshore wind turbines generate more power in the Omani peak electricity demand during the summer. Thus, offshore wind turbines have great advantages over land-based wind turbines in Oman. Overall, this work provides guidance on the deployment and production of offshore wind energy in Oman. A thorough study using bankable wind data along with various logistical considerations would still be required to turn offshore wind potential into real wind farms in Oman.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 543
Author(s):  
Jiawen Li ◽  
Jingyu Bian ◽  
Yuxiang Ma ◽  
Yichen Jiang

A typhoon is a restrictive factor in the development of floating wind power in China. However, the influences of multistage typhoon wind and waves on offshore wind turbines have not yet been studied. Based on Typhoon Mangkhut, in this study, the characteristics of the motion response and structural loads of an offshore wind turbine are investigated during the travel process. For this purpose, a framework is established and verified for investigating the typhoon-induced effects of offshore wind turbines, including a multistage typhoon wave field and a coupled dynamic model of offshore wind turbines. On this basis, the motion response and structural loads of different stages are calculated and analyzed systematically. The results show that the maximum response does not exactly correspond to the maximum wave or wind stage. Considering only the maximum wave height or wind speed may underestimate the motion response during the traveling process of the typhoon, which has problems in guiding the anti-typhoon design of offshore wind turbines. In addition, the coupling motion between the floating foundation and turbine should be considered in the safety evaluation of the floating offshore wind turbine under typhoon conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 589
Author(s):  
Subhamoy Bhattacharya ◽  
Domenico Lombardi ◽  
Sadra Amani ◽  
Muhammad Aleem ◽  
Ganga Prakhya ◽  
...  

Offshore wind turbines are a complex, dynamically sensitive structure due to their irregular mass and stiffness distribution, and complexity of the loading conditions they need to withstand. There are other challenges in particular locations such as typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, sea-bed currents, and tsunami. Because offshore wind turbines have stringent Serviceability Limit State (SLS) requirements and need to be installed in variable and often complex ground conditions, their foundation design is challenging. Foundation design must be robust due to the enormous cost of retrofitting in a challenging environment should any problem occur during the design lifetime. Traditionally, engineers use conventional types of foundation systems, such as shallow gravity-based foundations (GBF), suction caissons, or slender piles or monopiles, based on prior experience with designing such foundations for the oil and gas industry. For offshore wind turbines, however, new types of foundations are being considered for which neither prior experience nor guidelines exist. One of the major challenges is to develop a method to de-risk the life cycle of offshore wind turbines in diverse metocean and geological conditions. The paper, therefore, has the following aims: (a) provide an overview of the complexities and the common SLS performance requirements for offshore wind turbine; (b) discuss the use of physical modelling for verification and validation of innovative design concepts, taking into account all possible angles to de-risk the project; and (c) provide examples of applications in scaled model tests.


Author(s):  
Bingbin Yu ◽  
Dale G. Karr ◽  
Huimin Song ◽  
Senu Sirnivas

Developing offshore wind energy has become more and more serious worldwide in recent years. Many of the promising offshore wind farm locations are in cold regions that may have ice cover during wintertime. The challenge of possible ice loads on offshore wind turbines raises the demand of modeling capacity of dynamic wind turbine response under the joint action of ice, wind, wave, and current. The simulation software FAST is an open source computer-aided engineering (CAE) package maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In this paper, a new module of FAST for assessing the dynamic response of offshore wind turbines subjected to ice forcing is presented. In the ice module, several models are presented which involve both prescribed forcing and coupled response. For conditions in which the ice forcing is essentially decoupled from the structural response, ice forces are established from existing models for brittle and ductile ice failure. For conditions in which the ice failure and the structural response are coupled, such as lock-in conditions, a rate-dependent ice model is described, which is developed in conjunction with a new modularization framework for FAST. In this paper, analytical ice mechanics models are presented that incorporate ice floe forcing, deformation, and failure. For lower speeds, forces slowly build until the ice strength is reached and ice fails resulting in a quasi-static condition. For intermediate speeds, the ice failure can be coupled with the structural response and resulting in coinciding periods of the ice failure and the structural response. A third regime occurs at high speeds of encounter in which brittle fracturing of the ice feature occurs in a random pattern, which results in a random vibration excitation of the structure. An example wind turbine response is simulated under ice loading of each of the presented models. This module adds to FAST the capabilities for analyzing the response of wind turbines subjected to forces resulting from ice impact on the turbine support structure. The conditions considered in this module are specifically addressed in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 19906:2010 for arctic offshore structures design consideration. Special consideration of lock-in vibrations is required due to the detrimental effects of such response with regard to fatigue and foundation/soil response. The use of FAST for transient, time domain simulation with the new ice module is well suited for such analyses.


Author(s):  
Hasan Bagbanci ◽  
D. Karmakar ◽  
C. Guedes Soares

The long-term probability distributions of a spar-type and a semisubmersible-type offshore floating wind turbine response are calculated for surge, heave, and pitch motions along with the side-to-side, fore–aft, and yaw tower base bending moments. The transfer functions for surge, heave, and pitch motions for both spar-type and semisubmersible-type floaters are obtained using the fast code and the results are also compared with the results obtained in an experimental study. The long-term predictions of the most probable maximum values of motion amplitudes are used for design purposes, so as to guarantee the safety of the floating wind turbines against overturning in high waves and wind speed. The long-term distribution is carried out using North Atlantic wave data and the short-term floating wind turbine responses are represented using Rayleigh distributions. The transfer functions are used in the procedure to calculate the variances of the short-term responses. The results obtained for both spar-type and semisubmersible-type offshore floating wind turbine are compared, and the study will be helpful in the assessments of the long-term availability and economic performance of the spar-type and semisubmersible-type offshore floating wind turbine.


Energies ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 579
Author(s):  
Taimoor Asim ◽  
Sheikh Zahidul Islam ◽  
Arman Hemmati ◽  
Muhammad Saif Ullah Khalid

Offshore wind turbines are becoming increasingly popular due to their higher wind energy harnessing capabilities and lower visual pollution. Researchers around the globe have been reporting significant scientific advancements in offshore wind turbines technology, addressing key issues, such as aerodynamic characteristics of turbine blades, dynamic response of the turbine, structural integrity of the turbine foundation, design of the mooring cables, ground scouring and cost modelling for commercial viability. These investigations range from component-level design and analysis to system-level response and optimization using a multitude of analytical, empirical and numerical techniques. With such wide-ranging studies available in the public domain, there is a need to carry out an extensive yet critical literature review on the recent advancements in offshore wind turbine technology. Offshore wind turbine blades’ aerodynamics and the structural integrity of offshore wind turbines are of particular importance, which can lead towards system’s optimal design and operation, leading to reduced maintenance costs. Thus, in this study, our focus is to highlight key knowledge gaps in the scientific investigations on offshore wind turbines’ aerodynamic and structural response. It is envisaged that this study will pave the way for future concentrated efforts in better understanding the complex behavior of these machines.


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