Nicolas Pinon

Project Description

A large proportion of onshore wind turbines are approaching the end of their design life. A decision must be taken on what to make of these wind turbines (repowering, decommissioning, reuse certain substructures…). The starting point of this issue is the accurate prediction of remaining lifetime.

Thus, the goal of my project is to estimate the accumulated damage by fatigue in the blades of wind turbines on a farm-wide scale, and to predict consumption over the remaining lifetime. To achieve this goal, a new network of sensor will be deployed on a reduced number of blades in the wind farm, combined with data-driven methods and Machine-Learning to extrapolate the fatigue damage of other blades.

​

Supervisors

University supervisor: Filipe Magalhães (FEUP)

University co-supervisor: Eleni Chatzi (ETH Zürich)

Industrial supervisor: André Graça (NADARA)

I was born in Belgium and raised in France. I studied Mechanical engineering at the École Nationale Supérieur de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (ENSMM). During this academic training, where I specialized in the modelling of complex dynamic structures, I had the opportunity to work for 6 months in Germany on fatigue damage applied to high-end bicycle components, and for 6 months in France on the effect of vibrations to human arteries and blood flow.  

Although not directly applied to wind energy, this professional and academic experience provided me with useful skills and showed me how much I enjoyed learning. This led me to look for a PhD after graduating.

Motivation

I was specifically looking for a collaborative PhD project between the university and an industrial partner, as I find it is the most effective way to practice applied research. I chose this field of research – Wind energy – because I always try to apply my work and my knowledge to high impact fields, which benefits the most people. I consider that sustainable energy production and Intelliwind perfectly meet these objectives.

With family members, friends and colleagues in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, and now Portugal, the European scale of the Intelliwind project is very appealing to me.