Project runtime: 01.02.2021 – 31.01.2024
2023-09-22_Vollversammlung_SensoTwin
2022-03-17_Vollversammlung_SensoTwin
2023-09-22_Vollversammlung_Poster_SensoTwin
2024-09-12_Software_Demonstrator_Video_SensoTwin
2024-09-18_Vollversammlung_Demonstrator_Pitch_SensoTwin
The project "SensoTwin – Sensor-integrated Digital Twin for High-Performance FRP Applications" is a joint research project of the Chair of Carbon Composites of the Technical University of Munich and the Technology Campuses Hutthurm and Freyung of the Deggendorf Institute of Technology in the MaterialDigital initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project was carried out from 1 February 2021 until 31 July 2024.
Within the project SensoTwin, a structural digital twin of a wind turbine rotor blade was developed. A new material ontology was designed to formally describe the material class of fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs) to support the collection of knowledge for the digital twin. Integrating the project into the MaterialDigital initiative ensured a continuous exchange with projects on other material classes. Experimental investigations focused on characterising material properties under thermal, chemical and mechanical (static and cyclic) influences, ranging from the constituent level (individual fibres, matrix, fibre-matrix interface) to the composite level. The digital representation of the rotor blade includes the as-built state to be able to map possible process defects (missing plies, ply misorientation, ply waviness and varying thickness) and their influence on the structural performance of the rotor blade. The virtual blade can be subjected to a curing simulation (process simulation) in the first step and an operating simulation (static and cyclic structural simulation) in the second step. Realistic temperature cycles for curing and wind data can be used to determine the operational loads. Finally, the digital twin allows a prognosis of fatigue-critical regions and an estimation of the remaining lifetime of the rotor blades.
In the first instance, the digital twin was implemented utilising commercial software. However, in the spirit of the Open Science approach, an additional version of the digital twin was implemented, which relies on open source software. With it, we want to create the best possible prerequisites for future projects. The open version of the software demonstrator can be found here.