The 14th EAWE PhD seminar took place 18-20 September 2018 in Brussels, organised by Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The seminar gives PhD researchers the opportunity to show their research to the EAWE community. The podium is open for both starting researchers and students at the end of their PhD in the topic of wind energy.
The 9th CDT cohort intake attended the PhD seminar and students presented the work from their summer projects. Our senior PhD students Becky Corley and Sofia Koukoura also presented their work on gearbox condition monitoring in the O&M session.
Hydro&Floating Session:
"Characterising Wave-Tidal Current-Turbulence Parameters for Fatigue Design of Tidal Turbine Components", by Marilou Jourdain de Thieulloy
"Experimental Measurements the of Fluid Forces on Bio-Inspired Tidal Energy Harvesters", by Marlee Nathalie Basurto Macavilca
Electricity Session:
"Comparison Between Different VSC Controllers Connected to a Weak Grid", by Mathieu Kervyn
"An Assessment of PLL based Controllers for Converters in Weak AC Systems", by Leo May
"Cost Reduction of Subsea Cables in Offshore Wind- farms through the Use of Energy Storage", by Rebecca Hall
"Integrating Temporary Energy Storage for Renewable Energy Devices", by Peter Taylor
New Concepts Session:
"Electrical Systems for Multi-Rotor System-based Wind Turbines", by Paul Pirrie
O&M Session:
"Wind Turbine Gearbox Failure Prediction Using Deep Learning", by Conor McKinnon
"Potential OPEX and Availability Changes from the Introduction of Larger Offshore Wind Turbines", by James Stirling
"Thermal Network Modelling of a Wind Turbine Gearbox Using Matrix Inverse Method for Condition Monitoring", by Becky Corley
"Comparing Rule Based and Machine Learning Based Vibration Condition Monitoring for Wind Turbine Gearboxes", by Sofia Koukoura
Our visiting researcher from AWESOME Marie Curie PhD programme, Estefania Artigao (Universidad de Castilla La Mancha), also took part in the O&M session with her presentation titled "Diagnosis of In-Service Wind Turbine DFIGs through Current Signature Analysis".
Our students found this seminar very beneficial for their professional and personal development. ''The seminar gave me a unique opportunity to present my research to the wider academic community and get feedback. I met a lot of interesting researchers working in my field from institutes across Europe and these fruitful discussions can potentially lead to international collaborations and enhancement of wind energy research.", commented our student Mathieu Kervyn.
This year, Senior PhD workshops were introduced in the seminar for the first time. In these workshops, senior PhD students shared their experience in a particular skill with young researchers in an extended session. Our final year PhD student Sofia Koukoura was invited to give a lecture in an area of her expertise. Sofia shared the floor with Elena Gonzalez, who was also a visiting researcher in our centre as part of the AWESOME programme H2020. Elena and Sofia gave an informative seminar on "Working with SCADA data" in which they introduced the students to the concept of condition monitoring and showed examples of operation and maintenance expenditures can be reduced by detecting wind turbine failures.
"Sharing my expertise with early stage PhD researchers was a unique experience for me. I enjoy teaching and I think that's the best way to learn. Preparing the seminar with Elena was also a fun process and we managed to coordinate successfully from the two ends of Europe." said Sofia.
This year there was also a Meet the Industry Event with representatives from ZF Wind power, Jan de Nul Group, Parkwind, InnoEnergy, OCAS and Siemens Gamesa.
The conference dinner was organised in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, in the dinosaur hall room, which gave the chance for more networking and was a great way to end the conference.
The team in VUB did an amazing job in organising this event and we would like to thank them and the EAWE community on behalf of the Wind and Marine Energy Systems Centre for Doctoral Training.
More information on the conference can be found here.
Can you spot our students in the photo?
