Damage Identification in a Laboratory Offshore Wind Turbine Demonstrator

This paper presents a method to detect and identify damage in a laboratory offshore wind turbine support structure. The structure consists of three different parts: the jacket, the tower and the nacelle. The jacket is a lattice structure joined with several bolts. The tower consists of three different sections joined by bolts. The nacelle is composed of a single piece. The different parts are also joined with bolts. The damage in the structure is simulated by loosening some of the bolts in the jacket. Two damage detection algorithms, namely AutoRegressive methods and NullSpace methods, have been tested in a primitive variation of this structure without the jacket, obtaining good results. In this paper we present the application of the last damage detection method to the new structure with the jacket and an extension to identification of the damage.