The 30th International conference on Condition Monitoring and Diagnostic Engineering Management (COMADEM 2017 – http://www.comadem2017.com/) was held in Preston and Grange-over-Sands, United Kingdom, from 10th to 13th July 2017.
This year’s congress was organized by the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and packed with over 60 oral presentations discussion various aspects of condition monitoring and maintenance. Additionally, four interesting keynote lectures gave insight in opportunities in offshore wind condition monitoring, gear deterioration monitoring with vibration demodulation techniques, damage quantification for rotating machinery and machine learning applications.
The congress was attended by the AWESOME ESRs Elena Gonzalez (CIRCE) (http://awesome-h2020.eu/projects/esr-1/), Helene Seyr (NTNU)( http://awesome-h2020.eu/projects/esr-3/) and Jannis Tautz-Weinert (LBORO) (http://awesome-h2020.eu/projects/esr-5/). Elena presented a study on wind turbine fault detection based on the use of machine learning algorithms and SCADA data of high resolution.
The results confirmed the improvement of wind turbine’s performance understanding and representation under real operating conditions, as well as of the fault detection capabilities of the suggested approach. Helene presented her work on the influence of repair durations on the downtime of an offshore wind farm. In her paper she presented a novel approach to the topic, namely the stochastic process of alternate renewal, and calculated the distribution of the downtime based on assumed distributions of the failures and repair durations. Jannis presented a case study on detecting drivetrain failures by model-based temperature monitoring and analysis of statistical parameters based on a Physics of Failure approach. The results showed the abilities of both approaches in indicating anomalies, but also highlighted that further research is needed to establish a reliable warning system.
Helene’s presentation of the paper “The Impact of Maintenance Duration on the Downtime of an Offshore Wind Farm – Alternating Renewal Process” won the Best Student Presentation award. The scoring for the award included the clarity of presentation, timekeeping and the content of the paper.
