Friday 20 April saw the inauguration of the Vibration and Acoustic Laboratory & Future Energy Initiative at Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden.
The Vibration and Acoustic Laboratory will contain new equipment including data acquisition hardware, analysis software, electrodynamic shakers and impact hammers.
The laboratory will enable the Future Energy Initiative – a project to create a unique Scandinavian centre for research into clean energy solutions. It will help to enable working in new cross-disciplined areas, with emphasis on industry-related research projects.
This broad approach will focus on wind energy and other renewable energy technologies in the typically young clean-energy industries, covering both technical and economic conditions, as well as systemic issues. Brüel & Kjær has lent the new laboratory a wide selection of sound and vibration equipment.
Speaking at the opening, Brüel & Kjær’s vice president of research and design, Lars Agerlin, said: “Our aim is to help [the] industry to improve the design and operation of wind turbines and other clean energy technologies by developing greater reliability, efficiency and safety, with a low environmental noise impact.”
Lund University’s professor of structural mechanics and the University’s coordinator for this project, Göran Sandberg, said: “To be able to run, for example, a wind turbine, we must be able to read and interpret the vibrations that the plant emits. Then we can detect and repair damage in time. In general, equipment like this can help our research about understanding the vibrations from different constructions. Hopefully, it can also open up entirely new applications.”
The Future Energy Initiative partnership builds on the proven success of collaboration between Brüel & Kjær and Canada’s Windsor University.
Agerlin said: “This is the second ‘centre of excellence’ that we have helped to establish. The first has been a huge success, not only in wind energy, but has also led to cooperation and projects in other areas.”
