SEMINAR:Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades using...

Guest:Murat Inalpolat, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Title:Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades using their Acoustic Signatures

Date/Time: March 5, 2025, 17:40

Location: Zoom, https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/91918919943

Abstract: Current utility blade testing, in-situ health monitoring and damage detection is a bottleneck to the certification and advancement of new blade designs and materials as well as reliable operation of wind turbines. Because of continually varying operating conditions, all blades will experience leading and trailing edge splits, cracks, or holes that are currently not detectable except by visual inspection or post blade failure. A novel acoustics-based wind turbine blade structural health monitoring approach is proposed, where the proposed approach is expected to address the need for a robust, reliable, and low-cost blade condition monitoring and operational damage detection system. The proposed innovative system fuses data from a limited number of low-maintenance sensors for passive monitoring of natural flow-induced noise (due to wind) that couples with the structural damage. The blade damage will manifest itself in changes to the acoustic cavity frequency response functions and to the blade acoustic transmission loss (spectral content of acoustic aberrations modifications across the blade’s composite structure).

Bio: Murat Inalpolat, Ph.D, is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Prof. Inalpolat is currently serving as the Associate Department Chair. He has led several research projects related to wind energy, aerospace, and automotive technologies at UML. Prof.Inalpolat’ s research has been well-funded by federal agencies such as NSF, DOE, NOWRDC, MassCEC, and US Army DEVCOM as well as private industries. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the ASME Letters in Dynamic Systems and Controls Journal. He was awarded with the prestigious NASA Faculty Fellowship in 2022. Prior to his appointment with University of Massachusetts, he was with General Electric’s R&D Center in NY, leading and supporting research and development projects for wind energy, aviation, healthcare, transportation, and steam turbine businesses with focus on energy, efficiency, dynamics, diagnostics, and power density improvement of machinery. He previously held positions at The Ohio State University, first as a research associate and then as a postdoctoral fellow. He was previously awarded by CTI (Car Training Institute of Germany) with the prestigious “Young Drive Experts” award based on his quality of the research undertaken and currently holds three patents on the turbomachinery design, clearances, and their optimization.