Sebastian Malte Hermansen from Aalborg University has received the Danish Composite Award 2025 for his work on structural optimization of composite materials in offshore wind turbine blades.
The award is presented by the Composite Section of the Danish Plastics Industry Association, which each year honors a PhD or thesis project that contributes to the development and use of composite materials.
In his PhD, Sebastian Hermansen has developed a tool that can assess early in the design process whether a wind turbine blade can withstand the millions of vibrations and loads it is exposed to in operation. This makes it possible to discover and correct weak points before the construction is complete, which can result in structures with low weight combined with strength.
- Receiving the Danish Composite Award 2025 means an incredible amount to me. Behind the thesis lie many early mornings, long days and bumps in the road. I see the award as recognition of this hard work and further confirmation that it has been worth giving 110 percent to reach the goal, says Sebastian Malte Hermansen, who today continues to work with the method in an industrial postdoc position at Gurit Wind Systems, in a press release.
The method, which has previously only been used for metals, has been adapted for the first time to composite materials such as fiberglass. Composite materials are widely used for wind turbine blades because they combine low weight with high strength. The challenge in optimizing them lies in understanding and calculating fatigue failure, where the material gradually loses strength under repeated loads. Hermansen's method makes it possible to model and predict these failures so that the design can be improved before production begins.
The project is part of the MADEBLADES research collaboration between Aalborg University, LM Wind Power, AB Inventech and DTU Wind Energy. MADEBLADES aims to develop new solutions for the wind turbine blades of the future through interdisciplinary collaboration between industry and research. Hermansen's tool has already been tested on a commercial wind turbine blade of over 100 meters, showing that the technology can be scaled to the largest wind turbines on the market.
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