Abstract No.

Towards a Digital Twin for Corrosion Monitoring and Health Estimation of Offshore
Wind Turbine Structures

Agusmian Partogi Ompusunggu1,* , Inge Coudron1, and Jia Wan1

1
Flanders Make
*Presenting author

Corrosion is the main root cause for offshore wind turbine (WT) structures failure (Price &
Figueira, 2017; Martinez-Luengo, et al., 2016), and it has the lowest probability of detection
and the biggest severity in the event of failure. Improper corrosion protection follow-up and
inadequate management can result in structural degradation, e.g., offshore wind turbine
support structures. Cost of repairing the corrosion protection system can be much higher
than the initial installation cost of the corrosion protection system by itself. Therefore, initial
corrosion protection solutions are of crucial relevance for offshore renewable energy system
components such as WT towers, WT transition piece, WT sub-structure (fixed or floating
platforms). Although initial corrosion protection solutions would have been installed on all
these parts, however, these solutions can still be harshly damaged by the corrosive
environmental offshore conditions.

To avoid WT structures failure that leads to wind energy production downtime, a non-
destructive corrosion monitoring system combined with diagnosis, prognosis and decision
support tools is a necessity for aiding the operation and maintenance (O&M) of WT
structures subject to corrosion degradation. The online corrosion monitoring data is
processed by the diagnosis, prognosis or decision support tool to extract relevant information
that interests the stakeholder, e.g. the WT operator, O&M manager, etc. Furthermore, this
information can be visualized by overlaying it on the CAD model of each WT to create a
Digital Twin (DT) of the WT. The DT concept for general structural health monitoring
purposes has been proposed in (Grosse, July 2019) and in particular for corrosion monitoring
of offshore structures (Adey, et al., 2020). In the era of Industrie 4.0, the DT concept has
been introduced into many sectors and applications.

In this paper, we discuss the development of a 3D visualization tool that can facilitate in
building a DT of an offshore WT. The tool is based on Pvbrowser which is an open-source
SCADA application framework and has been used in real SCADA systems, e.g. in Romania
spanning 10,000 square kilometres with 50 power switches (Engineering, Retrieved in March
2020). The proposed architecture and the developed human-machine interface (HMI) are
shown in Figure 1. Note that the main rationale behind the selection of the open platform was
its open-source codes philosophy and flexibility that will enable us to interface with
measurement data stored in a given database and also to integrate with the corrosion
diagnosis, prognosis and decision support tools that are currently under development.

An important feature that might distinguish the proposed 3D visualization software tool from
the commercial solution (Adey, et al., 2020) is the ability to combine a CAD WT model with
both corrosion measurement data, e.g. based on ultrasound (US) sensing principle, coming
from fixed array US sensors and a mobile US sensor (e.g. embedded into a drone) or
diagnostic and prognostic results. The corrosion state estimated by the diagnostic/prognostic
tools will be visualized on top of the CAD WT model interactively. Furthermore, a 2D graph
where various indicators, such as the absolute wall thickness, the wall thickness reduction or
other corrosion indicators estimated at the locations of interest, can also be visualized over
time.

Acknowledgement: This work was carried out in the WATEREYE project that has received
funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 851207.

Supported by SciSerTec

Web: http://www.scisertec.de
Keywords: ”Digital twin” ”Corrosion Monitoring” ”3D visualization tool” ”Wind turbine structure” ”Diagnosis &
Prognosis”

Images:
Link: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static.vcongress.de/cms/forwind/paper/4546cb3b-597c-4e0d-9d65-
72e7fb75ba6b.png
Description: Figure 1: (a) The proposed architecture of the 3D visualization tool (b) The human-machine interface
(HMI) layout

References:
Adey, R., Peratta, C. & Baynham, J., 2020. Corrosion Data Management Using 3D Visualisation and a Digital
Twin. NACE International.
Engineering, L. S., Retrieved in March 2020.. The process visualization browser.
https://pvbrowser.de/pvbrowser/index.php., s.l.: s.n.
Grosse, C. U., July 2019. Monitoring and Inspection Techniques Supporting a Digital Twin Concept in Civil
Engineering. Kingston University, London, UK, Fifth International Conference on Sustainable Construction
Materials and Technologies (SCMT5).
Martinez-Luengo, M., Kolios, A. & Wang, L., 2016. Structural health monitoring of offshore wind turbines: A review
through the Statistical Pattern Recognition Paradigm. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 64,
pp. 91 - 105.
Price, S. & Figueira, R., 2017. Corrosion Protection Systems and Fatigue Corrosion in OffshoreWind Structures:
Current Status and Future Perspectives,. Coatings, 7(2).

Supported by SciSerTec

Web: http://www.scisertec.de