Fatigue Analysis of Copper Conductor for Offshore Wind Turbines by Experimental and FE Method

The objective of this work was to investigate the fatigue performance of a 95 mm2 copper conductor. The compacting procedure applied during the manufacturing process causes geometrical irregularities in the wires. Specimens from different layers have been tested in tension-tension mode with a stress-ratio, R = 0.1. The irregularities have been measured and through numerical studies applied to assess the resulting bending stresses in tension loading. When this is accounted for, the fatigue behavior of the core and the outer layer seems to be similar. This indicates that the difference in fatigue data observed between different layers of wires can be explained by surface irregularities. However, this needs to be supported by more data.