Experimental and numerical validation of an innovative OSD strengthening with a bonded and bolted plate

For the renovation of the Suurhoff bridge, Arup decided to design and propose a new, innovative strengthening scheme, which improves the fatigue performance of the bridge deck and extends the design life of the bridge by at least 15 years. In this strengthening scheme, a steel plate is placed on top of the existing deck plate with a layer of...

Identification of Fatigue and Resonance Frequency Influencing Parameters of an Offshore Wind Turbine via Data Analysis of Real Measurements

Technology improvements and growing maturity of the offshore wind industry have resulted in significant cost reductions and rise in demand. More can be achieved by focusing on improving the understanding of key design areas of an offshore wind turbine (OWT). Since fatigue is one of the main design criteria for offshore structures and little is...

Online Prognostics of Remaining Useful Properties for Cross-Ply Composites in Early Fatigue Life: A Model-Based Machine Learning Approach

High performance continuous fiber-reinforced composites are becoming increasingly important in the aerospace industry. In these structures, internal damage is often created and propagated throughout the lifetime, having a negative impact on the structural properties. In order to allow for condition-based maintenance, there is a need for reliable...

Feasibility of Acoustic Emission Methods for Fatigue Monitoring in Tubular Double Side Welded T-joints

In the field of fatigue testing in laboratory conditions, the common practice is uniaxial testing (i.e. in tension). The real-life loads on structures are usually not limited to one direction but contain multiaxial components. For this kind of testing, the ship and offshore structures department of Delft University of Technology developed a...

Numerical and Experimental study on the application of the Self-Magnetic Flux Leakage method for monitoring fatigue cracks in Steel Structures

Fatigue crack monitoring is essential to Ship and Offshore structures, in order to guarantee structural integrity and safety on board. Regular inspections, which are currently performed manually are hazardous, costly and infrequent. The CrackGuard JIP has the goal of developing a system for reliable monitoring of fatigue cracks based on the...

Monitoring of Fatigue Damage for Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations: Investigating Operational Strain Estimation Techniques

A global focus on the shift to renewable energy has introduced international targets for sustainable energy production, which have strongly increased the interest in offshore wind turbines (OWT’s). In order to make offshore wind energy even more competitive, the levelised cost of energy for this industry has to be brought down. One of the OWT...

Applicability of the Fatigue Damage Sensor in a Structural Health Monitoring System: Sensor fatigue characteristics and lifetime estimates