MAXWind

MAintenance, Inspection and EXploitation Optimization of Offshore Wind Farms subjected to Corrosion-Fatigue.

 

There is a need for accurate lifetime assessment tools that can help offshore wind farm owners and operators to optimize the wind farm in the future lowering the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE). This is of importance for the farms that are currently in operation and need an optimized maintenance strategy and possible extension of their exploitation, as well as for new projects which can also benefit from lifetime assessment tools in the design process.
The global goal is to get a much better estimation of the remaining life of in-service wind turbines and to derive optimized inspection and maintenance plans for a group of similar structures. This will make it possible not only to define the optimal inspection plan, leading to reduced maintenance costs while ensuring functionality and safety, but also to calibrate the safety factors of design standards attempting to enhance the fatigue analyses in the design stage.The focus concerns the coupled fatigue and corrosion impacts.