Técnicas y Servicios de Ingeniería (TSI) participates as a member of the consortium in the #FIBREGY project funded by the European research and innovation program Horizon 2020. The FIBREGY project started in early January 2021 and has a total budget of 8.056.482 € (GA 952966) that is distributed over the three-year duration of the project.
FIBREGY analyses the feasibility of the application of composite materials in the design and construction of certain structural elements of the renewable marine platforms with the purpose to take advantage of their important advantages such as good fatigue resistance, weight reduction, less environmental impact, reduction of OPEX index, among others, but above all of the absence of corrosion in fiber-based materials. The main advantage in promoting the extensive use of FRP materials in the construction of offshore platforms is their immunity to corrosion, which results in an important reduction of the maintenance costs on marine offshore platforms, as well as an increment of the life cycle. On the other hand, the implementation of FRP materials in the construction of offshore marine platforms causes a significant weight reduction, which facilitates both the transport and installation of the offshore platforms in the sea. In addition, the stability, as well as other parameters of interest of the marine offshore platform, could be improved due to the incorporation of FRP lightweight materials in the construction.
The project is formed by a multidisciplinary consortium coordinated by the research center CIMNE (International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering) and has the participation of two medium-sized shipyards (TUCO, IXBLUE), an international classification society (BV), four engineering consulting companies with broad experience in the engineering sector (ENEROCEAN, COMPASS, TSI, TIDETEC), a company specialized in marine paints (CORSO), as well as three research centers (INEGI, CIMNE, AVK) and one university (ULIM) of recognized prestige. These 12 international entities belong to seven countries of the European Union (Spain, France, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Germany) promoting the industrial and scientific collaboration among the member countries of the European Union.
TSI is one of the main actors of the FIBREGY project where he acts several times as a task leader and as a work package leader of a work package entitled “Design, Engineering and Development of regulations for the construction of offshore platforms”. In this work package, three elements of renewable platforms will be redesigned using composite materials: the two towers and floating platform structure of the W2Power platform owned by ENEROCEAN and the marine platform for the use of tidal energy “TIDETEC TIDAL TURBINE”. In this case, TSI with the support of TIDETEC re-design the housing of the offshore platform “TIDETEC TIDAL TURBINE” using the FRP design methodologies and manufacturing technologies selected throughout the project, which will be verified by the construction of a demonstrator. Apart from that, TSI will be in charge of developing a structural health monitoring (SHM) system to evaluate the state of the FRP components integrated into the FRP-based tower of the W2Power offshore platform, which is in this case the two towers that connect the wind turbines with the semi-submersible. The methodology will work on the basis of changes in KPI parameters such as vibratory energy that will allow not only detecting the damage state but also the quantification of the level of damage in marine offshore structures. Moreover, TSI will participate in the execution of additional tasks that belong to other project work packages as the participation in the elaboration of a market study to promote the application of composite laminar materials in the construction of maritime offshore platforms and other sectors of the blue economy (WP1); the selection of the most appropriated composite materials for the construction of offshore marine platforms, along with the development of multifunctional composite materials which serves to evaluate the damage state of the FRP components applied in the marine offshore platforms (WP2); the selection of the most suitable manufacturing technologies for the fabrication of the different components in the offshore platforms (WP5); and the realization of the sea trials on the prototype of the W2 Power towers built in FRP materials in order to evaluate the influence of meta-oceanic conditions, as well as the validation of the monitoring systems developed in the framework of the FIBREGY project.
The main challenge of FIBREGY is to demonstrate the feasibility of the massive application of fiber-based materials in the design and construction of offshore wind turbine platforms. The extensive use of FRP materials along with the development of the construction techniques may result in an inflection point of the life cycle costs of the marine platforms, as well as helping to reach the ambitious EU climate goals. From TSI side, this project represents an unbeatable opportunity to continue to invest in innovation and R&D with the purpose to remain at the forefront in the sector of marine renewable platforms. The technological advances generated throughout the FIBREGY project will be published on the project’s official website, which will be updated periodically to report about the activities carried out by the FIBREGY consortium.
