Safe and stable on wet feet

BAM presents stable structures and intelligent monitoring technology for offshore wind energy farms at the Hanover Fair

In the future, offshore wind farms (OWF) will be increasingly used for energy production. At the Hanover Fair, the BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing will present their first research results on stable foundations and safety monitoring technology for OWFs achieved through a joint project with industry and other research institutes.

Currently, several wind farms are being built in the North and Baltic Sea. Flow, wave impact, tides, corrosion, moving ground and weather-dependency and often poor accessibility caused by the sea condition raise new challenges for foundation and monitoring technology of OWF. Restricted access for maintenance at sea necessitates the development of intelligent measuring systems to supervise the conditions of wind farms. Within the project sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) an integral monitoring and assessment system is being developed and tested for the monitoring of rotor blades, the generator and the entire system.

At the fair a model is being used to explain how the investigations are undertaken on foundation structures. Special significance is attributed to the foundation because too large deformations may lead to the complete failure of the entire structure.

An original cast angle bracket "jacket" foundation, which weighs six tons, will be used at the exhibition to illustrate the measurement methods for load determination. For water depths of 20 m to 40 m, common off the German North Sea Coast, the "jacket" is often used in foundations. The cast angle brackets, which are the connections between corner posts and diagonals, experience particularly high stresses. The calculated structural behaviour of the highly stressed components under static and cyclic load was compared with the experimentally determined results. The tested components were found to have a good load-bearing capacity.

These methods and results are also applicable to other fields such as aviation or buildings infrastructure. The route for licensing and using these results will be explained at the BAM booth at the Hanover fair.

BAM will be at the Hanover Fair in Hall 2 Booth 45A.

Contact: Dr. Jürgen Lexow
Presidential Staff Office – Research Coordination, Marketing
Phone: +49 30 8104-1004
Email: juergen.lexow@bam.de

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