Assessing the viability of implementing significantly oversized holes in high strength friction grip bolted connections: Towards the increased modularity of bridge decks and ease of their replacement

The development towards a circular economy has many hurdles to overcome. For the construction sector an important step in this process is the transition towards reusing structural elements. Prefabrication of elements is a significant step towards achieving this concept. However, a case where both prefabrication and reuse are limited is the...

Non-Local Effects of Support Structure Diameter on Wave Induced Fatigue Loads of Monopile-based Offshore Wind Turbines

One of the main cost drivers of an offshore wind power plant are the support structures of the wind turbines, it is therefore of primary importance to optimize their design. Among the support structures available, the concept most widely adopted is the monopile-based support structure, whose design is often fatigue-driven. Offshore structures...

Virtual sensing in an onshore wind turbine tower using a Gaussian process latent force model

Wind turbine towers are subjected to highly varying internal loads, characterized by large uncertainty. The uncertainty stems from many factors, including what the actual wind fields experienced over time will be, modeling uncertainties given the various operational states of the turbine with and without controller interaction, the influence of...

Towards Convex Economic Model Predictive Individual Pitch Control for Wind Turbine Load Mitigation

Wind turbines offer an appealing method for power generation. In the fight against global warming wind energy helps realise green house gas emission reduction targets. Moreover, given a globally increasing demand for energy, the role of wind energy is set to become even more important. Historically, the cost of wind energy has decreased...

Damage Diagnostics of a Composite Single-Stiffener Panel Under Fatigue Loading Utilizing SHM Data Fusion

A case study is presented in which the first steps are made towards the development of a structural health monitoring (SHM) data fusion framework. For this purpose, a composite single-stiffener panel is subjected to compression-compression fatigue loading (R = 10). The carbon-epoxy panel contains an artificial disbond of 30 mm, which was...

Fatigue design load calculations of the offshore NREL 5 MW benchmark turbine using quadrature rule techniques

A novel approach is proposed to reduce, compared with the conventional binning approach, the large number of aeroelastic code evaluations that are necessary to obtain equivalent loads acting on wind turbines. These loads describe the effect of long-term environmental variability on the fatigue loads of a horizontal-axis wind turbine. In...

Fatigue-caused damage in trabecular bone from clinical, morphological and mechanical perspectives

Bone quantity and quality are considered the main predictors of bone mechanical properties (i.e., strength and fracture resistance). These factors deal with the morphology and chemical composition of bone and can be assessed by non-invasive techniques such as dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), providing the bone mineral density (BMD) and...

Plasma Actuation for Mitigation of Fluctuating Loads on Airfoils: An Experimental Study

Wind tunnel measurements are performed to investigate the potential for mitigation of aerodynamic load fluctuations on airfoils, as the main source of fatigue for wind turbines, using plasma actuators. The experiment consists of aerodynamic force measurements using six strain gauges and 2-component velocity measurements using particle image...

Modeling and Control of an Offshore Wind Turbine with Hydraulic Drivetrain and Regenerative Power System

Climate change is an inevitable fact and governments worldwide have started to recognize this by expanding the contribution of renewable energy sources to our global energy production. Wind energy is currently one of the most attractive solutions for the transition to a more sustainable energy future. Since wind energy is not the only competitor...

Dynamic aeroelastic tailoring of a strut braced wing including fatigue loads

High aspect ratio strut braced aircraft can significantly reduce the induced drag. The inherent anisotropic behaviour of the composite material along with their weight saving potential can improve the performance of the aircraft during the flight. Thus, a composite strut braced aircraft is one of the promising candidates to achieve the...

On the effects of an azimuth offset in the MBC-transformation used by IPC for wind turbine fatigue load reductions

<br/>Wind energy currently is one of the most attractive solutions to help in the goal of switching to a more sustainable way of energy production. To stay competitive with other forms of energy production, the reduction of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) is an important indicator. One way of achieving this goal is by increasing the size of...

Hydrodynamic behaviour of floating wind turbines - Difference between linear and non-linear wave effects on wave induced fatigue loads in a spar-type floating wind turbine

Study to influence of non-linear wave effects on fatigue loads in a spar-type floating wind turbine (Hywind). Two studies are executed. One, a statistical analysis on suitable simulation duration and number of seeds required for accurate results. Two, a analysis of differences in fatigue loads due to linear versus non-linear waves.

Probabilistic estimation of fatigue loads on monopile-based offshore wind turbines

Offshore wind energy faces three important trends: (1) wind farms grow in size, (2) monopiles are installed in deeper water, and (3) cost reduction remains the most important challenge. With wind farm size, the importance of variations in environmental site conditions across the wind farm increases. These site variations, e.g. water depth and...

Fatigue properties of AA2024 for intermittent thermal healing and analysis of damage development using positron annihilation Doppler broadening technique (abstract)