Andrei-Alexandru Popa
Additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing, has ceased to be a novelty for quite some time now. This has not deterred companies from competing for more cost-efficient and reliable technologies, and the market for hobby printers and exotic filaments has been in full swing in consequence. Taking the virtually limitless design potential of 3D printing along with the capabilities of multi-extruder printers, we are working on creating fully 3D printed mechatronic assemblies, i.e. without the use of wires, screws or other classic clamping methods.
Defended on 23.04.2021
Nonlinear super-elements for wind turbine blades
The PhD project objective is the development of nonlinear super-elements of wind turbine blades for the improvement of structural models to be used in aeroelastic simulations and blade design optimisation. Traditionally dynamic simulations of wind turbines are based on modelling structural components like the blades using low fidelity models based on beam elements or linear modal expansion. The direct use of high-fidelity models based on shell or solid elements on dynamic models are too computationally costly especially since thousands load cases must be computed.