Last week, a team from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) visited the impressive Vouglans/Saut-Mortier hydropower plant on the Ain River, in the Bourgogne-France-Comté region of France. The plant is owned by EDF, which contributes three demonstrators to the project and kindly hosted and supported the team during their visit.
The main objective of this initial field trip was to determine the natural vibration modes of the rotor experimentally, including those of the pump-turbine and the shaft. This is one of the initial steps in developing of the Advanced Monitoring System, which will be integrated into the Cyber-physical platform for Advanced Decision Support (CADS).
The results of this analysis will be used to:
- develop new predictive maintenance algorithms based on real-time tracking of natural frequencies as health indicators for the entire unit and
- calibrate and validate the cyber-mechanical models developed in the project.
