R&D Test Systems: Digital Twins for Wind Turbine Testing

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum interview Dr. Elif Ecem Bas, a PhD project engineer at R&D Test Systems in Denmark. Dr. Bas discusses how R&D Test Systems is leveraging digital twin technologies and hybrid testing to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of testing wind turbine components, particularly pitch bearings. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. As wind turbines grow in size and complexity, testing these components has become increasingly expensive and time consuming. To address these challenges, R&D Test Systems is leveraging digital twin technologies to improve the efficiency of their test bed. Benches, ultimately reducing testing time and costs. And if you don't already know, R&D Test Systems is a leading company in the wind energy industry, providing testing solutions for wind turbine components on a massive scale. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Ecem Bas, a PhD project engineer. At R&D Test Systems in Denmark, Dr. Bas earned her PhD in structural engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno, and is currently focusing on digital twin technologies at R&D Test Systems. In this interview, we will delve into the applications of digital twin technology and wind turbine component testing and learn more about Dr. Bas's work in this cutting edge field. Ecem, Welcome to the program. Elif Ecem Bas: Thank you. And thanks a lot for the introduction. Allen Hall: So there's a lot to learn here because Joel and I have been following the digital twin saga over the last several years because you see a lot of of news articles and information about digital twins and OEMs or have been looking at it and a lot of smaller companies have been trying to prove out digital twins. But we haven't seen a lot of it being applied in a place where I think it's important, which is in the testing phase. And R&D Test Systems if you haven't worked with R&D Test Systems, build some of the largest pieces of test equipment in the world to test generators up to 25 megawatts and all kind of blades, just insanely big things. So what is the benefit of using Digital Twin on such large test equipment? Elif Ecem Bas: Let's come one step back. As you mentioned in your introduction. Testing is necessity for all the wind turbine components and their subcomponents as well. This is required by the standards and this is required by the design and also the manufacturing. So we will not get rid of testing. Testing is very important. But as the wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger, this time to test these components takes also a lot of time. And for as an example for a blade to test the Fatigue test to make a fatigue test for a blade. It takes one year or more than a year to do the saw Joel Saxum: Constant movement. Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah, exactly to see all the damages through the blade. You have to do that and also for a highly accelerated lifetime testing of an assault. This also takes six and eight months and also testing this. These are large facilities, right? And testing this will also cost money. tens of million euros bought to establish and run this. And this leads, of course, longer time to market. For new and more powerful wind turbines. In detail systems, we are trying to develop digital tools to overcome these challenges and to have these turbines to rol...