True digital twins

In the North Sea between the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, more than 600 offshore structures have exceeded or will soon exceed their original design lifetime. The industry is facing extensive investments to upgrade or reinforce the existing infrastructure in order to maintain the present oil and gas production in the future.

In the less mature offshore wind industry, wind farm operators are facing different challenges. They must ensure that the structures they have designed have sufficient strength to carry the loads of waves, wind, soil conditions and other environmental factors in the harsh offshore environment so that they can continue safe and reliable operation at as low cost as possible throughout the design lifetime or even longer.

To address these challenges, Ramboll has developed a so-called True Digital Twin, which is a digital model continuously monitoring how the structure is doing and updated with real time information about the loads affecting the structure. Now, this experience from the oil & gas sector is also introduced in the offshore wind industry.

Lorena Tremps, who is Scottish Power/Iberdrola’s project manager of the industry-driven EU-backed initiative called ROMEO, which aims at reducing the operation and maintenance costs of offshore wind power, says:

“The main challenge of offshore wind operators is to deal with massive amounts of information from the assets that are in operation. The benefits that digital twin can provide are very clear to us. Firstly, improve our understanding of our offshore wind assets, lowering the costs of operation & maintenance, and ultimately exploit the opportunities for lifetime extension. The digital twin developed for ROMEO is going to put Ramboll and Iberdrola in the forefront of innovation when it comes to asset and integrity management tools.”

Downloads

2018
The True Digital Twin Concept for Fatigue Re-Assessment of Marine Structures ASME 2018, 37th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering, OMAE, June 2018, Madrid, Spain Authors: Tygesen, U.T., Jepsen, S.J., Vestermark, J., Dollerup, N., Pedersen, A. 

2018
State-of-the-Art and Future Directions for Predictive Modelling of Offshore Structures Dynamics Using Machine Learning Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. Authors: Tygesen, U.T, Worden, K., Rogers, T., Manson, G., Cross, E.J. 

2018
A Bayesian Filtrering Approach to Operational Modal Analysis with Recovery of Forcing Signals ISMA 2018 Conference, Leuven, Belgium
Authors: Rogers, T.J., Worden, K., Manson, G., Tygesen, U.T., Cross, E.J. 

2018
A Bayesian Non-Parametric Clustering Approach for Semi-Supervised Structural Health Monitoring Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing Journal
Authors: Rogers, T.J., Worden, K., Fuentes, R., Dervilis, N., Tygesen, U.T., Cross, E.J.

2021
Digital Transformation by the Implementation of the True Digital Twin Concept and Big Data Technology for Structural Integrity Management Proceedings of Asset Integrity Management - Ageing and Life Extension Conference, November 30 - December 2, 2021, Stavanger, Norway
Authors: U. T. Tygesen, E. J. Cross, P. Gardner, K. Worden, B.A. Qadri, T. J. Rogers