ERC StG WINDMIL

WINDMIL at a glance

The excessive energy consumption that Europe is faced with, calls for sustainable resource management and policymaking. Amongst renewable sources of the global energy pool, wind energy holds the lead. Nonetheless, wind turbine (WT) facilities are conjoined with a number of shortcomings relating to their short life-span and the lack of efficient management schemes. With a number of WTs currently reaching their design span, stakeholders and policy makers are convinced of the necessity for reliable life-cycle assessment methodologies.

WINDMIL established a smart framework for the monitoring, inspection and life-cycle assessment of WTs, able to guide WT operators in the management of these assets from cradle-to-grave. This project is founded on a minimal intervention principle, coupling easily deployed and affordable sensor technology with state-of-the-art numerical modeling and data processing tools.

An integrated approach was delivered
(i) a new monitoring paradigm for WTs relying on fusion of structural response information,
(ii) new methods for forward (physics-based) and inverse (data-driven) analysis of wind turbine structures.
(ii) a data-informed framework for diagnostics (short-term) and prognostics (long-term)

Project Tracks

Track 1: Data Driven Simulation (Inverse Engineering)

This track deals (i) with the extraction and handling of information obtained via monitoring (through appropriate sensor deployments) and (ii) with derivation of data-driven system representations. The latter may include parametric and nonparametric representations, as well as time-invariant and time-variant models for tracking the evolution of the WT dynamics.

Track 2: Physics based Simulation (Forward Engineering)

Ohysics and data informed omputational models are developed, able to account for the uncertainties relating to diverse loading (wind, wave, wake effects, etc), site specific conditions, and approximative modeling simplifications.