The European project INNTERESTING aims to accelerate wind energy technology development and to extend the lifetime of wind turbine components by developing innovative virtual and hybrid testing methods for prototype validation of pitch bearing and gearbox components

INNTERESTING, coordinated by the Technological Research Centre IKERLAN, has a budget of €4.75M and it is financed by the European Union´s H2020 Research and Innovation Program. The project kick-off meeting took place last 15^th and 16^th of January 2020 at KU Leuven facilities (Belgium).

The project

The full name of the project is “Innovative Future-Proof Testing Methods for Reliable Critical Components in Wind Turbines”. This project pursues the development of innovative virtual and hybrid testing methods for prototype validation of pitch bearing and gearbox components, which are the components that will be developed within the selected case studies.

The goal of INNTERESTING is to develop a disruptive methodology to demonstrate the reliability of larger wind turbine critical components without the need of building larger test-benches in the future by overcoming size-dependent issues during design process and testing.

In comparison with current testing methodologies based on large-scale component validation, a key objective of INNTERESTING is to reduce considerable environmental and economic impact and to improve social acceptance of the newly developed INNTERESTING solutions and testing methods.