MIE Seminar: Dr. Alessandro Sabato, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering University of Massachusetts, Lowell, "Enhancing Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades with UAV-Based Computer Vision"

Content

Abstract

Blades are critical components of wind turbines, and their structural integrity directly affects efficiency, safety, and service life. However, continuous exposure to harsh environmental conditions and dynamic loads can lead to wear, degradation, and in severe cases, catastrophic failure. To mitigate these risks, novel and cost-effective techniques are needed to monitor blade health, assess dynamic response, and reduce reliance on schedule-based maintenance. Computer vision methods offer an appealing solution due to their non-contact nature, with each pixel in the recorded images acting as a virtual sensor to capture global and local system responses. These approaches become even more powerful when deployed via unmanned aerial vehicles, which enable rapid and remote inspections, thereby accelerating the detection of structural changes. This seminar presents new findings in stereo camera calibration and stereo-matching algorithms that enable the use of three-dimensional (3D) computer vision for structural dynamics measurements of wind turbine blades. The seminar also introduces Stack-Average, a novel image-processing technique that enhances damage localization in wind turbine blades from long-range images (i.e., 50+ m). By exploring these emerging monitoring strategies, the session highlights future directions in blade health assessment and their implications for improving the reliability and sustainability of wind energy systems.

Bio

Dr. Alessandro Sabato earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calabria, Italy. During his doctoral studies, he spent 18 months at Columbia University, NY, as a Research Associate working on experimental testing for vibration-based monitoring of heritage buildings and oil-drilling pipelines. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML). At UML, Dr. Sabato’s research focuses on integrating non-contact and computer vision techniques with unmanned aerial vehicles to enable automated assessment of large-scale structures. His broader interests include artificial intelligence, drone-borne inspection, image and signal processing, nondestructive evaluation, structural dynamics, and structural health monitoring. Over the past six years, Dr. Sabato and his research group have secured ~$5.5 million in funding from state and federal agencies as well as industry partners to advance sensing solutions and data analytics in these thrust areas. Dr. Sabato was recently honored with the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his project “Enhancing Measurements of Dynamic Features in Large-Scale Structures via Three-Dimensional Aerial Stereovision.”