Assistant Professor Simon Laflamme recently received a $256,689 grant from the Iowa Alliance for Wind Innovation and Novel Development (IAWIND). He will use it to study sensing skin for automated structural condition assessment of wind turbine blades.
Heartland Energy Solutions of Mount Ayr, Iowa, will match the funding in terms of equipment, supplies and labor.
Laflamme and his research team on this project also comprises of Iowa State’s Nicola Bowler, Michael Kessler and Krishna Rajan of materials science and engineering; and Randall Geiger of Iowa State electrical and computer engineering. The team will develop a large-scale flexible membrane that can be deployed on wind turbine blade beams to detect and localize structural damage, much like a biological skin that monitors local deformation over large regions.
Read the IAWIND press release for more about Laflamme’s recent grant award.