News – A conference on the structural health of wind farms was held at UPNA

60 people at the Public University of Navarra took part in the Conference on Analysis of the Structural Health of Wind Turbines, organized by the Research Institute for Smart Cities (ISC) and the Doctoral School of Navarra. The primary objective of the conference was to share the scientific and technological results obtained under the several publicly funded projects developed at UPNA, revolving around the analysis of the structural health of wind turbines.

The course was also opened to researchers from within and outside the State University of Navarra, and research carried out in the framework of some doctoral dissertations on this subject was presented.

As the researchers point out, given the problem of obsolescence of large infrastructure such as dams, bridges or wind farms, current alternatives have strong environmental and economic impacts. In the case of wind farms, it is possible to install a new one or extend the life of the existing one, but to choose the latter it is necessary to know precisely the health of the park and its reasonable life extension period.

From left to right, researchers Miroslav Zivanovic, Eduardo Hidalgo (University of Seville), Aitor Plaza, Julien Bacaikwa, Xabir Iriart, Inigo Vilela, Carlos Castellano, Alfonso Carlosina, and Antonio Lopez.

In this context, in recent years Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technologies have been developed, based on tower vibration measurement, which are applied in these large infrastructures. Through continuous monitoring, the goal is to determine the condition of the structure and its evolution over time to detect structural failure or aging. In the case of wind turbines, the fact that they are rotating structures makes the application of SHM technologies more complex, so current research is focused on how to improve these technologies and make them more reliable.

UPNA projects

Since 2019, the Public University of Navarra has been developing SHM technologies applied to wind turbines. The researchers addressed both the design of the IoT (Internet of Things) accelerometer sensors, the hardware for the autonomous power supply, and the signal processing techniques for analyzing the data provided by the sensors. UPNA’s interdisciplinary team is made up of researchers from the Telecommunications, Signals, Microwave and IMAC (Mechanical and Applied Computational Engineering: Multisolid and Robotics) groups, also affiliated with the ISC.

They are also joined by researchers from the University of Seville and in one of the projects under development, collaborating with IED Greenpower and Aresse in Navarran.