On 10th of October, Smart Fibres hosted the first technical meeting of the Bladesave project to which took part all the consortium members and Ivan Ginga, the European Commissioner. The introduction was made by Jose Alvarez who sustained a presentation about Smart Fibres and its role in the Bladesave project followed by Benn Faulkner who reviewed the project process with the consortium.
Further, Benn Faulkner gave a presentation and introduced the Windmanager, presented the blade defect matrix and explained the blade damage assessment process. Based on the defect matrix, Smart Fibres, TWI, and Renewable Advice discussed the test plan. So, it was established that the lab trails with GFRP strips to be carried out before the tests with blade section samples, with both FBG AE sensors and PZT AE sensors attached.
Regarding the tests, it was decided to be carried out in TWI, the test samples following to be provided by Renewable Advice. After this, Hasula Dias gave a presentation which introduced the SmartSonic system development process and explained the differences between FBG AE and PZT AE sensors. Next, the TWI and Smart Fibres decided that more comparison tests need to be taken to validate the parameter calculations and to evaluate the attenuation effect before the mechanical tests on GFRP strips.
The SmartBlade loads monitoring system (equipped with an FBG strain sensor) and SmartAccel (FBG acceleration sensor) were presented by Lukas Hutter, who showed that the strain and the vibration measurement sensors are qualified through tests and demonstration. Lukas presentation was followed by Kevin Jones, who explained how SmartSonic and SmartScan acquired and process the data function, pointing out that for the SmartSonic high sampling rate data acquisition is needed an i7 processor.
Further, Alin Calinciuc and Andrei Ciobanu presented a plan to couple the system (hardware) with the data communication electronics. The plan was discussed and accepted by Smart Fibres and Renewable Advice, who agreed to set up a configuration file for Windmanager. The consortium also discussed the international and European standards that BladeSave needed to follow, which is very important for the final system certification, and agreed to start at an early stage due to the time-consuming certification process.
At the end of the meeting, the consortium established the next plan objectives, confirming the necesity of regular meetings. Therefore, it has been established to have the next consortium meeting in early February 2018, at EWT facilities and take lateral meetings to be arranged on a monthly basis.
