Frequency Domain Decomposition performed on the strain data obtained from the aluminium model of an offshore support structure

Abstract

This paper presents an application of Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of offshore wind energy support structure model. The analysed structure is a tripod equipped with 16 FBG sensors.From a wide variety of Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) methods Frequency Domain Decomposition (FDD) technique is used in this paper under assumption that the input loading is similar to a white noise excitation. The FDD method can be applied using different sets of sensors, i.e. the one which contains all FBG sensors and the other set of sensors localised only on a particular tripod's leg. The cases considered during investigation were as follows: damaged and undamaged scenarios, different support conditions. The damage was simulated as an dismantled flange on an upper brace in one of the tripod legs. First the model was fixed to an antishaker table and investigated in the air under impulse excitations. Next the tripod was submerged into water basin in order to check the quality of the measurement set-up in different environmental condition. In this case the model was excited by regular waves.