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Developing a Climbing Maintenance Robot for Tower and Rotor Blade Service of Wind Turbines
Abstract
Today, more than 275.000 wind turbines generate over 400 GW electrical power worldwide. So the demand for maintenance constantly raises. Since September 2014 the University of Applied Sciences Aachen and partners develop SMART (Scanning, Monitoring, Analyzing, Repair and Transportation), a maintenance platform for wind turbines. The research project is funded by the German federal ministry of economic affairs (BMWi), to support the upcoming industrial needs. While the reliability of the mechanical parts, like main bearing, generator, gears and main shaft increased during the recent years, the maintenance and improvement of rotor blades should be improved. A weatherproof cabin for rotor blade maintenance can extend the annual maintenance period from eight to twelve months, a major goal of the SMART development. In addition, a climbing mechanism for conical shaped, thin and slippery surfaces is generated and tested. SMART successfully completed the proof-of-concept milestone by demonstrating climbing in December 2015.
... Digital twins can be derived from sensor data to enable predictive maintenance and long-term condition monitoring. The first step towards this goal is to develop several prototypes to validate the basics [4][5][6][7]. Flying and surface climbing systems are collaborating with the goal of large-scale inspection in wind farms and on-demand local repairs ( Figure 1). A friction-based climbing ring robot (SMART: Scanning, Monitoring, Analyzing, Repair and Transportation) can carry high payloads and is equipped with an onboard robotic arm. ...
... The simulation of the crawler tracks was carried out with the ADAMS Tracked Vehicle Module (ATV). The analysis in ATV indicates that belt-based crawler tracks load the curved tower surface unevenly [4]. Comparative investigations have shown that with disc tracks a uniform distribution of the local surface pressure is achievable. ...
The maintenance of wind turbines is of growing importance considering the transition to renewable energy. This paper presents a multi-robot-approach for automated wind turbine maintenance including a novel climbing robot. Currently, wind turbine maintenance remains a manual task, which is monotonous, dangerous, and also physically demanding due to the large scale of wind turbines. Technical climbers are required to work at significant heights, even in bad weather conditions. Furthermore, a skilled labor force with sufficient knowledge in repairing fiber composite material is rare. Autonomous mobile systems enable the digitization of the maintenance process. They can be designed for weather-independent operations. This work contributes to the development and experimental validation of a maintenance system consisting of multiple robotic platforms for a variety of tasks, such as wind turbine tower and rotor blade service. In this work, multicopters with vision and LiDAR sensors for global inspection are used to guide slower climbing robots. Light-weight magnetic climbers with surface contact were used to analyze structure parts with non-destructive inspection methods and to locally repair smaller defects. Localization was enabled by adapting odometry for conical-shaped surfaces considering additional navigation sensors. Magnets were suitable for steel towers to clamp onto the surface. A friction-based climbing ring robot (SMART— Scanning, Monitoring, Analyzing, Repair and Transportation) completed the set-up for higher payload. The maintenance period could be extended by using weather-proofed maintenance robots. The multi-robot-system was running the Robot Operating System (ROS). Additionally, first steps towards machine learning would enable maintenance staff to use pattern classification for fault diagnosis in order to operate safely from the ground in the future.
... Experimental trials demonstrated that the proposed system (Fig. 24) can reasonably move on the blade of the wind turbine. Other notable research works highlighting the instrumental role of robots for O&M of wind turbines include [166,[179][180][181]. The blades of wind turbines get contaminated over time due to dust, ice, oil, marine salt, mosquitoes, flying plankton, etc. Experimental studies investigating the performance deterioration due to contaminations on the blade surfaces are reported in [182][183][184][185]. Figure 25 shows a typical power curve for a 300kW wind turbine. ...
The domain of Robotics is a good partner of renewable energy and is becoming critical to the sustainability and survival of the energy industry. The multi-disciplinary nature of robots offers precision, repeatability, reliability, productivity and intelligence, thus rendering their services in diversified tasks ranging from manufacturing, assembling, and installation to inspection and maintenance of renewable resources. This paper explores applications of real robots in four feasible renewable energy domains; solar, wind, hydro, and biological setups. In each case, existing state-of-the-art innovative robotic systems are investigated that have the potential to create a difference in the corresponding renewable sector in terms of reduced set-up time, lesser cost, improved quality, enhanced productivity and exceptional competitiveness in the global market. Instrumental opportunities and challenges of robot deployment in the renewable sector are also discussed with a brief case study of Saudi Arabia. It is expected that the wider dissemination of the instrumental role of robotics in renewable energy will contribute to further developments and stimulate more collaborations and partnerships between professionals of robotics and energy communities.
In the process of detecting the paint film thickness of offshore wind turbine towers, there are problems such as the risk of high-altitude and the changeable working environments, which pose a great threat to the safety of operators. In response to the above problems, a crawler-type climbing-robot system for measuring paint film thickness of offshore wind turbine towers is developed. Firstly, the robot structure is designed by adopting modular design idea. Secondly, the kinematics analysis of the robot's facade steering is carried out, and the kinematics model of the robot's instantaneous steering is established. On this basis, considering the influence of hydrodynamic force and track deformation, a dynamic model of multi-track coordinated motion is established. Then, the kinematics and dynamics of the robot are simulated and calculated by Matlab. The robot control system is designed according to the requirements of multi-module cooperative operation. Finally, a robot prototype is developed based on the theory and simulation, and the robot is verified through the experimental platform and the offshore wind power field experiment.
This article tackles the challenge of negative pressure adhesion control of a Vortex Robotic (VR) platform, which utilizes a modified Electric Ducted Fan (EDF)-based design for successfully adhering to surfaces of variable curvature. The resulting Vortex Actuation (VA) system is estimated through a switching Autoregressive-Moving-Average with eXternal input (ARMAX) identification, for accurately capturing the throttle to adhesion force relationship throughout its operating range. For safe attachment of the robot on a surface, the critical adhesion is modeled based on the geometrical properties of the robotic platform for providing the required reference forces. Within this work, an explicit controller via the use of a Constraint Finite Time Optimal Control (CFTOC) approach is designed in an offline manner, which results in a lookup table realization that ensures overall system stability in all state transitions. In an effort to further improve the tracking response for arbitrary setup orientations, the adhesion control scheme is extended through a switching EMPC framework. The resulting frameworks are tested through both dynamic simulation and experimental sequences involving: a) adhesion control on a rotating test curved surface and, b) adhesion and locomotion sequences on a water pipe.
Mit einer momentan installierten Gesamtleistung von ca. 30 GW sind Windenergieanlagen (WEA) maßgeblich an der Energieversorgung in Deutschland beteiligt. Jährlich werden ca. 2000 neue Anlagen installiert – ein Wachstum von ~12% [1]. Die Technologie zur Erzeugung elektrischer Energie aus Windenergie ist noch vergleichsweise jung und erfuhr in den letzten Jahren eine rasante Entwicklung. Daher wurde der späteren Instandhaltung wie Inspektionen oder gar Reparaturarbeiten zunächst wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Als diese Instandhaltungsarbei-ten mit der Laufzeit der WEA immer häu-figer anfielen, wurden sie anfänglich mit einfachen Hilfsmitteln wie z.B. Kränen o-der Industrieabseilern durchgeführt. Als die Ausfälle der WEA auf Grund von Schäden durch Blitzeinschlag oder Ma-terialversagen an den Rotorblättern und der dadurch verursachte wirtschaftliche Schaden sprunghaft stiegen, wurde der Bedarf der nachhaltigen Instandhaltung erkannt. Seit Oktober 2014 wird das Forschungsprojekt SMART (Scanning, Monitoring, Analysis, Repair and Transportation), in dem eine kletternde Plattform für WEA entwickelt werden soll, vom BMWi gefördert.
- S Chitta
- I Sucan
- S Cousins
Chitta, S., Sucan, I., Cousins, S.: MoveIt!, IEEE Robot. Automat. Mag., volume 19, 1, pages
18-19, (2012)