Health Monitoring of Offshore Wind Farms (HEMOW)
Research with global reach to improve monitoring and maintenance of offshore wind farms.
Project leader
Dates
April 2011 to March 2015
Sponsors
Partners
The West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin, Poland
Description
Offshore wind farms play a role in renewable energy generation. Health monitoring and maintenance are major challenges. This is because of their large scale, high cost and extreme environments.
Faults in the tower or blades can cause serious secondary damage to the whole wind turbine system if prompt repair action is not taken. They can lead to catastrophic failure. Techniques are being developed worldwide to monitor changes in specific parts of the structure. But skills and expertise are disparate and disconnected. This is due to the wide variety of materials and techniques used.
This new interdisciplinary area will bring well recognised scientific institutions and researchers together. The members of the project consortium will provide complementary knowledge and strengths. They have carried out leading research in areas such as:
- non-destructive evaluation
- structural health monitoring
- communications and networks
- information management