Manufacturing of jacket support structures for offshore wind turbines by thick-section laser welding - LaserJacket

现有的大多数海上风力涡轮机都建立在单桩基础上，空间框架基础(导管架)将是大多数新应用的基础选择。这将使风力涡轮机能够部署在更大的水深，离海岸更远的地方，从而导致更高的风速和更大的潜在发电能力。然而，目前涡轮机夹套的制造技术是非连续的，特别是劳动密集型，这是通常使用的手工制造方法的直接结果。激光夹克项目将评估三种创新的厚截面(&gt；60 mm)激光焊接技术，它们具有高生产率，成本效益高，适合制造厚截面涡轮夹套。随后，我们将向下选择一种单一的焊接技术，该技术将被进一步开发和演示，以适用于海上风力涡轮机护套。

The majority of existing offshore wind turbines are built on monopile foundations, space-frame foundations (jackets) will be the foundations of choice for most new applications. This will enable wind turbines to be deployed at greater water depth, further from the shore leading to higher wind speeds and increased potential generation capacity per swept area.However, current manufacturing techniques for turbine jackets are non-serial and particularly labour intensive, a direct consequence of the manual fabrication methods typically used.The LaserJacket project will assess three innovative thick-section (>60mm) laser welding techniques, which have a high-productivity, are cost-effective, and suitable for the manufacture of thick-section turbine jackets. We will subsequently, down-select a single welding technique which will be further developed and demonstrated for applicability to offshore wind turbine jackets.