BladeSave

The BladeSave Project is co-funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union and submitted under H2020-FTIPilot-2016 call Innovation Action, on-topic FTIPilot-01-2016 with the project ID 760353. 

BladeSave system is a fusion between a Fibre Optic Structural Health Monitoring System (Smartscan) providing multi-sensing capability (strains, vibrations, and acoustic emission), and a blade management software (WindManager) linking the data from inspection and maintenance to the SHM data offering a comprehensive solution for wind turbine blades monitoring, repair, and management.

BladeSave Objective

BladeSave System aims to increase the average annual availability per wind turbine from 95% to 98-99% through the optimization of maintenance routines and the maximization of component lifetime versus unscheduled repair/replacement and breakdown.

The main work of this project is to perform a unique functionality: the fusion between the SHM system Smartscan and the WindManager software in order to provide a system capable of collecting the data from monitoring, inspections, repairs, and build a risk matrix evaluating the blade health on a 5-grade scale. To achieve this, the data from Smartscan multiple sensing capabilities (temperature, strain, vibrations, acoustic emission) would be preprocessed on-site, uploaded to a cloud-based computing system for a second stage processing where the damages identified feed the risk matrix.

ASSIST Software will be involved in the development of the communication system and the pre-processing of data to perform system’s trials, the software fine-tuning and system demonstrations also will develop the project website, dissemination and promotional materials and support for the market uptake.

The BladeSave project, a part of the Horizon 2020 program, is formed of 5 partners from 3 countries: the United Kingdom represented by TWI, Renewable Advice, and Smart Fibres, Netherland represented by EWT, and Romania represented by our company ASSIST Software.