Recent progress on reliability analysis of offshore wind turbine support structures considering digital twin solutions

Abstract

Global wind energy has developed rapidly in recent years, and the offshore wind turbines (OWTs) have been applied to much more applications. Because the support structure of an OWT is prone to damage, it is crucial to strengthen the structural reliability to prevent unexpected failures and reduce operation costs by performing fault diagnosis, remaining useful life prediction, and condition-based maintenance. Through real-time monitoring on the operating status of the OWT support structures, the operation measurements can be obtained to detect initial structural cracks and predict the crack propagation to assess potential risks and perform just-in-time maintenance; as a result, the turbine downtime and maintenance costs can be significantly reduced and the wind turbine service life can be prolonged. This paper introduces the latest progress on the reliability analysis of the OWT support structures. First of all, the types of the support structures are reviewed; then, the reliability research progress on the support structure is presented and the existing challenges are discussed. In light of the digital twin (DT) technology, a solution to existing challenging issues is proposed by introducing the DT into the OWT support structures. This new DT framework will enable real-time monitoring, fault diagnosis and operation optimization of the OWT support structures, which may provide a useful application prospect in the reliability analysis of the OWT support structures in the future.