Spain - Samtech to create expertise centre in Barcelona for wind turbines design and verification

Samtech, has announced that its Iberian subsidiary will become its competence centre for the global design and the detailed mechatronic verification of wind turbines. As a competence centre, Samtech Iberia will join top-class engineers in transmissions, mechatronic design and advanced numerical simulation applied to wind turbines design and verification. The team will propose new solutions based on the integration of complementary disciplines like non-linear FEM technologies for composite blades and structures, state-of-the-art gearbox modelling capabilities, generator models, servomechanisms and turbine controllers into a unified modelling environment referred to as Samcef for Wind Turbines. The core component of this new environment is the powerful and generic non-linear FEA/MBS solver Samcef Mecano, developed by Samtech 15 years ago and definitely generalizing the FEM based numerical approach to complex mechanical systems.

"Wind turbine power trains are subjected to a very diverse spectrum of dynamic loads which depend on the dynamic properties of the complete mechatronical wind turbine system,” explains Andreas Heege, manager of Samtech Iberia. “The implicit dependence of power train loads on the dynamic characteristics of the assembled wind turbine excludes the classical decoupling of finite element analysis and multi-body simulation techniques. For this reason, the coupled mechanisms, structures and control formulation of Samcef Mecano, based on a finite element approach has been complemented by new components for aerodynamic loads evaluation and by specific post-processing tools for detailed evaluation of wind turbine power trains lifecycle.”

Samtech Iberia expertise applies to the full development cycle, from pre-concept and initial design, over detailed dynamic modelling of the entire wind turbine, to final optimisation phase. Samtech Iberia brings thus a huge experience in virtual modelling that experimental data acquisition cannot provide during early design process. "In addition to its generic engineering software offer, Samtech also develops very innovative solutions customized towards the specific needs of some industrial market segments" says Eric Carnoy, chief executive officer of Samtech headquarters. "Because of the strong demand of wind turbine market for such combined product and engineering expertise, Samtech decided to form a team of top engineers in Barcelona".