• In order to reduce the costs of generating wind energy, it is necessary to considerably increase the size of the wind turbines. In the case of wind generators supported on floating platforms, this increase could jeopardise the structural integrity of the supporting structures such as the tower or the platform. The DURALINK project, coordinated by the Eurecat technology centre, will respond to these structural integrity challenges.
  • The DURALINK European project will identify design opportunities to optimise floating wind structures used in marine installations. The project seeks to reduce both the capital and operating expenditures of these facilities.
  • The project consortium, which has a budget of more than 2.6 million euros and funding from the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) of the European Union, is made up of seven partners from four European countries: Spain, France, Belgium and Germany.

The DURALINK European project, coordinated by Eurecat technology centre, develops new solutions to extend the useful life of welds and steel chains in the structures of the new generations of large wind turbines. These solutions will reduce the weight of the structures and make them more resistant and economical, increasing the competitiveness of the generation of renewable wind energy offshore.

Specifically, the project will identify design opportunities for the optimisation of marine floating structures, resulting in a reduction in capital and operating costs of new offshore wind turbines. The project will innovate in areas such as protective coatings to minimise corrosion in structures, the estimation of the life of components and support structures and in new predictive models of mechanical degradation.

The DURALINK project is implemented with the purpose of “responding to the structural challenges and assessing the integrity of the large support structures and anchor chains that will improve the floating platforms for marine wind generation of the future, since it is foreseen that they will significantly increase their scale with larger turbines in order to achieve the reduction in the cost of the energy produced”, explains the project coordinator and researcher of the Corrosion and Degradation Line of the Metallic Materials Unit and Eurecat Ceramics, Dr Amadeu Concustell.

Also, this initiative “will allow evaluating new models for the mechanical behaviour in situations of mechanical fatigue in corrosive environments in steel components for large structures and will disseminate them so that they can be applied in the floating marine wind turbines of the future”, Dr Amadeu Concustell adds.

The results of the DURALINK project will be transferred to the wind energy, steel and heavy industry industrial sectors. They will also be shared with standardization bodies, which will help promote the use of the new coatings and steels of other resistance developed in the project in floating wind turbines.

All in all, the European DURALINK project will create new knowledge in the field of materials, develop new coatings and high-strength steels, validate and demonstrate new developments in relevant environments and drive industrial collaboration in order to apply the new developments.

The project consortium, which has a budget of more than 2.6 million euros and funding from the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) of the European Union, consists of seven partners from four countries European: Spain, France, Belgium and Germany. These are Eurecat, Sidenor Investigación y Desarrollo, the French Corrosion Institute, Windar Technology and Innovation, OCAS-ArcelorMittal Global R&D Gent, Grillo-Werke AG and the National Institute of Advanced Technologies of Brittany.