Extended life duration for steel welds and links for offshore renewable energy generation
DURALINK (RFCS 101156908)
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Start: 2024
Duration: 42 months
Coordinator: EURECAT
Participants: French Corrosion Institute, Sidenor, Windar, OCAS, Grillo-Werke, ENSTA Bretagne
Budget: – €
EU contribution: – €
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The growth and stability of the wind industry will depend essentially on continued reductions in wind energy cost, even below that of fossil-fuel based energy sources. Consequently, the offshore wind industry is upscaling Wind Turbines from 8 MW up to more than 12 MW. This level of upscaling puts tough materials challenges because the mass of the turbine increases linearly with the cube of the rotor radius. DURALINK project is thus motivated by the challenges in structural integrity assessment of the large structures and chains that will support offshore wind generation in the future. Therefore, the main objective of DURALINK is to identify optimization design opportunities for offshore structures that lead to a reduction of the CAPEX and OPEX of offshore wind turbines. To attain this objective, DURALINK will identify optimization design opportunities for offshore structures through the evaluation of existing and improved steel-grade welds, corrosion-fatigue analysis with cathodic protection at different potentials and developing predictive models of mechanical degradation. Furthermore, high strength steels composition will be optimized to lower Hydrogen Embrittlement susceptibility improving the security of chains for offshore wind turbines. Finally, DURALINK proposes a novel concept for protection of support structures. For this, it will develop novel thermal sprayed coatings for protection of substructure against marine corrosion able to be deposited by High Velocity Wire Arc Spray. The corrosion performance and enhanced behavior of the coated steels under fatigue, corrosion-fatigue and tribocorrosion conditions will be evaluated.
