MOORINGSENSE

MOORING SYSTEM INTEGRITY MANAGEMENT THROUGH MONITORING, DIGITAL TWIN AND CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES FOR COST REDUCTION AND INCREASED EFFICIENCY

The project MooringSense aims at reducing operational costs and increasing efficiency through the development of an efficient risk-based integrity management strategy for mooring systems based on an affordable and reliable on-line monitoring technology.

The proposed solution will be enabled by the development of a low-cost smart sensor for FOWT motion monitoring, a Mooring System Digital Twin (DT) model, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques, as well as control strategies for mooring condition management tolerance of single turbine and floating wind farms with multiple turbines.

The monitoring technology proposed will replace the existing unreliable and expensive monitoring systems based on load cells in the mooring lines by a combination of a robust motion sensor and numerical models. In addition, measurements will enable the development of more efficient operation and maintenance strategies, including optimized control.

MooringSense’s consortium strength covers the full value chain, with a proven track record in the Offshore Wind and Oil and Gas Industries and is supported by experienced research institutions. The project will start from current partners’ technology to develop an innovative cost-efficient mooring integrity management enabled by Global Navigation Satellite System technology, coupled with numerical modelling, control engineering and machine learning, with both increased efficiency of the overall resulting system as well as reduced operational expenditure, when compared with known current alternatives.

Project data:

Co-financed by: European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.
Project nº: Grant Agreement Nº 851703.
Consortium: The consortium comprises 9 partners from Europe’s key OW industry and academia, including worldwide market leaders in chains (Vicinay Marine Innovación), wires and ropes (Bridon-Bekaert Ropes Group), both producing hybrid solutions for mooring lines. They will collaborate to improve the understanding of mooring lines loading and performance, including degradation mechanisms. These industrial stakeholders, together with an end user of the technology such as Saitec SA, which is a floating wind turbine platform developer, a company specialized in the development of smart sensors for marine applications (Zunibal) and a renowned engineering company with a vast track record in the O&G and OW sectors providing support on O&M (Intecsea) ensure the impact and benefits of this project for the European industry.
Execution Period: 1st of November 2019 – 31st of October 2022.