Research database

In this context, this project addresses a critical and timely challenge in the wind energy sector: ensuring the structural integrity and optimizing the performance of increasingly complex wind turbine blades. The pursuit of larger, more flexible blades, often incorporating advanced composite materials and innovative features like morphing or deployable elements, demands a paradigm shift in structural health monitoring strategies. FIDES aims to achieve excellence by developing a comprehensive digital twin (DT) framework that integrates advanced finite element (FE) modeling, rotordynamics analysis, multiscale analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning models, and probabilistic analysis of rotating structures subjected to various loadings for enhanced SHM of wind turbine blades. The mathematical models developed by the FIDES project will accurately characterize the geometrical and material nonlinear behaviours typical of such structures during operation, surpassing the limitations of current consuming analyses. To validate these models, the numerical solutions will be compared with the results of experimental tests. This project is expected to provide fundamental knowledge for developing new structural models and design methods for future wind turbine blades, potentially reducing the large-scale risks of structural failure caused by the unknown mechanisms under extreme dynamic loads.