Texas Tech University

McDonald-Mehta Lecture Series 2017: Dr. Sanjay Arwade (UMass-Amherst)

McDonald-Mehta Lecture Series 2017: Dr. Sanjay Arwade (UMass-AMherst)
McDonald-Mehta Lecture Series 2017: Dr. Sanjay Arwade (UMass-Amherst)

The National Wind Institute was proud to welcome Dr. Sanjay Arwade (above photo) from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) for the final Spring event for the prestigious McDonald-Mehta Lecture Series last week.

Dr. Arwade, Professor in Civil Engineering, presented his lecture on "Extreme Events and the Reliability of Offshore Wind Energy Structures" to a packed classroom. Thank you to everyone who attended and who helped to make this event a success.

ABSTRACT:

The offshore wind energy industry in the U.S. is poised for dramatic growth with 15 wind energy areas already designated by BOEM along the Atlantic coast, and this growth will present the challenge and opportunity of engineering and con-structing, from the seafloor up, an entirely new civil infrastructure system. Through advanced analysis and performance evaluation, it should be possible to design this infrastructure to be meet target performance and reliability metrics and to serve the needs of society. Key topics in this talk include modeling of offshore hurricane hazard, performance assessment of fixed bottom support structures subject to extreme loading, soil-structure interaction, reliability analysis, and novel concepts for floating platform mooring systems.