Daniel Lacheta Lecumberri (Pamplona, 1998)who performs a industrial doctorate in the Public University of Navarra (UPNA)won the best poster award awarded by the jury during Xth Doctoral Conference recently organized in Jaca (Huesca) by Campus Iberus, the campus of international excellence to which the Navarrese academic institution belongs.
The work of PhD student from Pamplona focuses on the control of wind turbines used in the wind industrywhich is developing as a “spin-off” of UPNAtechnology company Vors Control.
For his part, the prize for the best poster awarded by the participants was given to María Foradada Pina, doctoral student at the University of Zaragoza, who presented a work on Spanish illustrators of the first half of the 20th century. Each of these prizes is worth 300 euros.
Wind energy, “the third most electricity-producing technology in Europe”with 16% of the total”, according to Daniel Lachetabased on Eurostat data (2022), has seen its development favored because it is “one of the cheapest technologies”.
“The reasons for this expansion are diverse, including the use of a free and inexhaustible natural resource, the large investment made in technological improvements and the increase the size of wind turbines“, explained the researcher, who successively completed the Industrial Technologies Engineering degree and the Masters in Industrial Engineering from UPNA.
One of the “keys” to wind energy efficiency “lies in continued increase in the size of wind turbine blades“. “The longer the blade length, the greater the power generation capacity. This is because the power of a wind turbine It increases quadratically with the length of its blades, which allows production costs to be distributed between a greater electricity production capacity and, therefore, reduces the cost of the kilowatt hour generated. However, this increase in size poses technical challenges, particularly with regard to the stiffness and aerodynamic loads that the blades must support, which traditionally requires a considerable investment in reinforcing materials,” said the researcher.
In this context, Daniel Lacheta studies the application of automatic control in his doctoral thesis to “ensure the rigidity of the Pallas to minimize the need for reinforcing materials.
“Automatic control is the technology used to regulate processes without human interventionallowing the system to maintain a desired behavior. In the wind industry, automatic control is used to improve operational efficiency, increase safety and reduce structural fatigue of components, thereby reducing maintenance costs and increasing the useful life of the system. he pointed out.
Her doctoral thesis is led by Irene Miquélez Madariaga and Jorge Elso Torralba, researchers at the Institute of Smart Cities (ISC) and professors at the Institute UPNA Engineering Department.
During his investigation, Daniel Lacheta proposes the use of fiber optic sensors along the entire length of the blades. “These sensors provide a real-time data stream on the structural behavior of the blades along their entire length, which, combined with advanced automatic control techniques, allows us to study whether more flexible – and therefore more competitive – blades do not compromise the efficiency and safety of the wind turbine,” he described.
INTERNATIONAL DAYS
THE Doctoral conferences have been organized by the Iberus International Campus of Excellencein collaboration with the doctoral schools of the four universities that make it up: La Rioja, Lleida, Public de Navarra and Zaragoza.
In this edition, 55 doctoral students participated from a dozen countries, most of whom are preparing their thesis in one of the universities of the alliance.
In addition, two participated representatives from the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour (France) and three from the University of Los Andes (Colombia)thanks to the agreements that the Consortium maintains with “high quality” institutions in the American country, the result of the work carried out from its headquarters in Bogotá, the capital of the country.
As part of the daily training programJavier Valls Prieto, professor of criminal law and criminology at the University of Granada, gave the lecture “Ethical questions of artificial intelligence in research: a European perspective”.
In addition, Participants were able to carry out different workshops on “Verbal and non-verbal communication”, “How to become aware, understand and manage emotions during the doctorate” or “How to effectively apply graphic design resources to scientific communication”, taught respectively by Óscar Orzaiz Resano (director of the Group of Theater UPNA), Agnès Ros Morente (professor at the University of Lleida) and Rosana Sanz Segura (teacher at the University of Zaragoza).
Also sSeveral parallel sessions have been developed in which students presented their research work and then debated it; all this, marked by a clear thematic multidisciplinarity.
