The basis for creating a digital twin is a suitable model with a close connection to reality in the form of measurement data. In this paper it is explained how model and measurement data of the support structure of a wind turbine can be obtained. The procedure is implemented on a real wind turbine with a concrete/steel hybrid tower. The monitoring includes the acquisition of vibrations, strains and temperature as well as the determination of the dynamic Young's modulus of the concrete structure by sound velocity measurements. For modeling, a finite element model with shell elements was chosen, which takes into account stiffening effects from static loads. A comparison between model and reality is the most important premise for the use of a digital twin: Therefore, a multi-stage model validation based on modal parameters and local material stresses is performed. The Digital Twin offers different usage scenarios; here one is carried out: the fatigue calculation and remaining useful life (RUL) estimation. For this purpose, material stresses at highly stressed positions are determined using measurement data and model. The results are currently still unrealistically high lifetimes for the concrete part. The results are based on relatively short (1 h, 24 h) stress time series. This could be one reason for the high values. It could also be an indication that fatigue is a non-critical load case for the concrete part.

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The present work deals with a measurability study of damage to supporting structures of wind turbines. The examined hybrid tower consists of a prestressed concrete part with an attached steel section on top. Principal focus is on developing a data preprocessing and analysis concept aiming to investigate the measurability of the two selected failure cases missing pretension of tendons and fatigue based change of Young’s modulus in reinforcement concrete. A simulation deduced out of real world mass and thrust forces provides a comparison with measured data based tower displacements, natural frequencies and mode shapes. The measurability of given deviations is investigated by means of virtual sensors, derived from the measurement setup of a test facility measuring acceleration, velocity, displacement and strain on different positions of the wind turbine tower, aiming the development of detection methods of such cases of damage for condition monitoring systems. The simulation input can be given by strain-based external forces or vibration-based displacements.

In this study the isogeometric B-Rep mortar-based mapping method for geometry models stemming directly from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is systematically augmented and applied to partitioned Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulations. Thus, the newly proposed methodology is applied to geometries described by their Boundary Representation (B-Rep) in terms of trimmed multipatch Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) discretizations as standard in modern CAD. The proposed isogeometric B-Rep mortar-based mapping method is herein extended for the transformation of fields between a B-Rep model and a low order discrete surface representation of the geometry which typically results when the Finite Volume Method (FVM) or the Finite Element Method (FEM) are employed. This enables the transformation of such fields as tractions and displacements along the FSI interface when Isogeometric B-Rep Analysis (IBRA) is used for the structural discretization and the FVM is used for the fluid discretization. The latter allows for diverse discretization schemes between the structural and the fluid Boundary Value Problem (BVP), taking into consideration the special properties of each BVP separately while the constraints along the FSI interface are satisfied in an iterative manner within partitioned FSI. The proposed methodology can be exploited in FSI problems with an IBRA structural discretization or to FSI problems with a standard FEM structural discretization in the frame of the Exact Coupling Layer (ECL) where the interface fields are smoothed using the underlying B-Rep parametrization, thus taking advantage of the smoothness that the NURBS basis functions offer. All new developments are systematically investigated and demonstrated by FSI problems with lightweight structures whereby the underlying geometric parametrizations are directly taken from real-world CAD models, thus extending IBRA into coupled problems of the FSI type.