VIIMA

Mitigating climate change and enhancing energy and resource efficiency with real-time virtual fatigue assessment and monitoring

About

VIIMA project is about overcoming the fatigue failures of lightweight and durable steel structures with real-time simulation of the operational loads and fatigue assessment. The project is a collaboration between LUT and Oulu Universities and six industrial companies seeking solutions for their own specific use cases.

Why and reasons behind

Due to the increase in electrification and sustainability, the need for lightweight yet durable steel structures are also increasing. These lightweight structures then lead to dynamically challenging structures where fatigue failures are a common issue. Fatigue failures are bad since they lead to unusable construction which stops the process or machine completely.

Objectives

VIIMA project creates a new methodology that is both validated and verified to assess fatigue in early stages of design, which enhance the readiness for adopting electrification and sustainability, showing the value creation aspect. VIIMA targets to develop the following solutions:

1 Better fatigue understanding with digital tools to understand the critical dynamic loading that causes the structure to fail. This results in a digital toolset that can be used to assess the fatigue loading history.

2 Virtual loads from the applications can be created with the real-time simulation models which many companies use in R&D. Developing industrially applicable methods.

3 Real-time virtual fatigue monitoring. The data can be generated for fatigue assessment with physics-based and real-time simulations at individual machine level. Additionally, the technology enables dynamically updating lifecycle estimates for fatigue-critical components.

Corresponding concrete results would be:

1 Methodology and software tool for fatigue assessment

2 Data model for fatigue analysis integration to engineering toolchain and methodology for dynamic load calculation

3 Control strategies for extending fatigue life of welded structures and evaluations of case-specific business potential

Funding

VIIMA project is funded by Business Finland.

Timing

The planned schedule for VIIMA is 2024 – 2026.

VIIMA’s effects to the environment:

Mitigation of climate change
Development of alternative energy forms
Development of energy and resource efficient products and processes
Mitigation or compensation of CO2 emissions
Increase of circular economy

VIIMA’s effects to corporate and administrative sustainability:

Development of sustainable value chains
Development of expertise in sustainable development

For more information:

Aki Mikkola, aki.mikkola@lut.fi