New project: Bolt & Beautiful
To reduce costs and increase bolting safety for future large wind turbines.
In a wind turbine, various parts in the tower, such as the connection to the foundation and the blade root connection to the hub are secured with large bolts. The industry partners of GROW have indicated a strong need to improve the assessment methods for ring flange connections, considering design, manufacturing and maintenance aspects. Therefore, GROW partners initiated the Bolt & Beautiful project that will start today. In this project, we will reduce the costs of bolts and flanges manufacturing and maintenance and increase bolting safety for existing and future large wind turbines.
In Bolt & Beautiful, we aim for an innovative package of measures rather than individual incremental steps. We will provide:
- a model to determine the fatigue strength of bolts;
- a model for new and existing ring flange connections with tolerance limits for new design and improved (remaining) life prediction for maintenance of existing structures;
- improved installation and maintenance procedures for bolted connections with innovative (pre)tension measurement techniques.
The four-year project starts on 6 September 2022. The partners of this project consortium are: Althen, DNV, Gemini, Hytorc, ITH, IWES, KCI, Leibniz University Hannover, Rijkswaterstaat, RWE, Shell, Siemens Gamesa, Sif, Sirris, TNO, TU Delft, TU Eindhoven, We4CE and Westermeerwind. Subcontractors are JBO and Akselos.
