The Next Generation of Wind Power

The global demand for electricity from renewable energies is increasing. More and more countries are replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, and hydropower. Wind power plays a central role in the energy supply.

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Risø are therefore focusing on optimizing the production of renewable energy. Research in the field of Wind & Energy Systems at DTU covers the entire range of necessary processes. A key aspect of this research is the design, manufacture, and testing of rotor blades for wind turbines.

The service life and planning of maintenance intervals is determined by the load and damage behaviour of the rotor blades. With the optical measuring systems ARAMIS and TRITOP, prototypes up to several metres in length can be measured quickly and easily. This makes it possible to dynamically measure 3D displacements, track crack propagation, and transfer the positions of complementary sensors to the simulation model.

The rotor blades developed and manufactured by the researchers are tested in extensive test facilites at DTU Risø campus. In order to optimize both design and production, it is necessary to understand how rotor blades behave under extreme loads, as well as the factors that lead to failure. Research is also being carried out into how rotor blades behave over the course of their service life, as structural damage typically evolves over time.

In order to capture blade geometry and integrate it into the digital twin, rotor blades are photogrammetrically measured with TRITOP, an optical 3D coordinate measuring system. The system TRITOP consists of a handheld digital camera and calibration objects. After applying coded and uncoded measuring points to the rotor blade, the camera takes pictures around the measuring object. These are used to create a 3D point cloud. The DTU department uses TRITOP for both undeformed and deformed rotor blades. The system is particularly suitable for flexible and mobile use and allows easy evaluation of the 3D coordinates directly in the ZEISS INSPECT software.

TRITOP first records reference point fields to enable precise inspection of large rotor blades. ARAMIS, a high-resolution optical 3D measuring system for performing full-field and point-based measurements, uses these reference points to automatically transform individual measurements, thereby achieving the superior accuracy of photogrammetric measurement across the entire measuring area.

ARAMIS sensors facilitate dynamic 3D data acquisition, including coordinates, displacements, and surface strain. For the seamless acquisition of deformations on large objects, multiple ARAMIS systems are linked and synchronized. The 3D coordinates are transformed into a joint measuring project using a point cloud of reference coordinates that TRITOP supplies from the surface of the blade and the surrounding test setup.