Applications are invited to undertake a full-time PhD by research in the Department of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Electronic Engineering, IT Carlow on the following project:
Mitigation of wind turbine erosion using climate data and uncertainty quantification methods
Lowering maintenance costs and increasing operational efficiency are primary challenges for the wind industry. A major cause of damage to wind turbine blades is erosion by repeated impacts of water droplets which results in a loss of energy generation estimated to be between ~5% (small amounts of erosion) and ~25% (moderate-to-heavy erosion) of annual energy production. Additionally, operators incur maintenance costs and loss of productivity during repair shutdowns. In the SPOTBlade project, state-of-the-art test facilities will be employed to study the mechanisms responsible for damage initiation and erosion propagation. Losses related to biofouling and contamination of blades will be addressed through modification and experimental evaluation of commercially available coating systems. Material characterisations will be undertaken to generate new data for damage modelling and to correlate to rain erosion tests. In parallel, modelling, using a novel hybrid approach, of the impact of climatic parameters and material coatings on blade erosion will be undertaken. SPOTBlade consortium consists for four academic institutions, Institute of Technology Carlow, University of Limerick (Lead partner) National University of Ireland Galway and Technological University Dublin.
The scope of the PhD program is to develop models and predict performance of different coating materials by using hybrid approach of FEA and machine-learning techniques in uncertain and harsh offshore environments. The prospective candidate will review different modelling methods from literature, model, and validate the erosion initiation and progression in liaison with other researchers performing experiments. Further, the data-driven, machine-learning and AI methods will be utilized to predict of “leading-edge erosion (LEE)” in timescale of blade life and the performance of different coating materials for blade life. The PhD candidate will further liaise with researchers to develop framework utilizing uncertainty quantification methods to predict the LEE based on various affecting parameters. The UQ methods will be extended to predict erosion safe operating conditions for wind farm operators.
Funding
This PhD position is for 3 years and fully funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland under the SEAI Research, Development & Demonstration Funding Programme 2021, Grant number 21/RDD/671 as part of the project SPOTBlade – Strategies for erosion and fouling Protection of Offshore Turbine Blades.