The workshop was organized in the framework of “Aeolus4Future” which is a research project and international graduate school. It is funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement. It is a multi-disciplinary training network environment that aims to create experts who will be in the forefront of the expanding field of wind energy utilization.
Being considered as one of the most promising renewable energy resources, has instantly placed wind energy into the spotlight of industry and scientific communities. The upcoming “renewable Europe” needs new generation of researchers capable to confront the increasing challenges and continuously rising trends for innovative, highly efficient and sustainable wind energy harvesting.
A group of 15 young world-wide scientists, recruited into this distinct program, was welcomed by Prof. Höffer, head of “Wind Engineering and Fluid Mechanics”, to join the workshop titled: „Full Scale Testing and Structural Identification“.

The organized 3 day workshop aimed at discovering the “power” of Structural Health Monitoring systems installed at full scale structures and was focused on delivering: i) the basic concepts behind monitoring based structural identification that made this field an emerging scientific trend, extensively popular for wind energy turbines and ii) going beyond the concept, to real life practical challenges arising from full scale applications of various monitoring strategies.

The hands-on experience in the Building Aerodynamics Laboratory, the interactive work on software oriented problem solving tasks, and the interesting and instructive daytrip for actual onsite dynamic testing of a pedestrian steel bridge (“Erzbahnschwinge”, Bochum), have created an optimally blended educational program which all instructors and our international guests have truly enjoyed.

This text appeared in Newsletter 2016-1. The entire newsletter can be downloaded from the homepage of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering.