Upcoming Events
Fall 2026 CIV Seminar Series: Eleonora Tronci
Assistant Professor, Tandon School of Engineering, NYU
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
"From Sparse Measurements to Fatigue Assessment in Offshore Wind Turbines"
Abstract
Offshore wind turbines operate under continuously changing wind, wave, and rotor-induced loads, yet many of the quantities needed to evaluate their structural performance cannot be measured directly. Limited instrumentation, inaccessible components, and variations in environmental and operating conditions make it difficult to reconstruct the forces acting on a turbine, estimate its response at uninstrumented locations, and determine how fatigue damage accumulates over time. These challenges motivate structural health monitoring approaches that combine measurements with structural mechanics, probabilistic inference, and machine learning. This seminar draws on the research experience matured using full-scale monitoring data from U.S. offshore wind installations, including the jacket-supported Block Island Wind Farm and a 6-MW monopilesupported turbine on the U.S. East Coast. The first part explores inverse load estimation: reconstructing unmeasured excitation from structural response through recursive Bayesian methods, hybrid physics–datadriven surrogate models, and physics-informed neural networks that incorporate equations of motion into model training. It also considers the practical difficulties introduced by incomplete measurements and model uncertainty. The second part addresses virtual sensing. Using Gaussian process regression and operational data from supervisory control and data acquisition systems, bending-moment histories can be estimated at locations without strain gauges, providing a broader view of structural demand and predictive uncertainty. The final part connects measured response to fatigue assessment through strain histories, rainflow counting, and concurrent wind, wave, and operating data. Particular attention is given to wind–wave alignment, turbine operating states, and the distinction between rare high-damage events and the moderate conditions that repeatedly contribute to cumulative fatigue. Together, these case studies illustrate how monitoring-based approaches can support the development of digital twins and data-informed decisions about offshore wind structural performance, while highlighting the remaining challenges in transferring methods across turbines and wind farms.
About the Speaker
Eleonora Maria Tronci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering and the Center for Urban Science + Progress at New York University. Her research lies at the intersection of structural dynamics, structural health monitoring, uncertainty quantification, and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on extracting meaningful information from sparse and imperfect measurements of complex infrastructure. She develops physics-informed and data-driven approaches for system identification, inverse load estimation, virtual sensing, structural damage detection, model updating, and fatigue and reliability assessment. Her work spans traditional civil infrastructure and renewable energy systems, including full-scale monitoring and digital-twin applications for offshore wind turbines. Before joining NYU, she held a faculty appointment at Northeastern University and conducted postdoctoral research at Tufts University, where she worked on the monitoring and dynamic characterization of offshore wind structures. She earned doctoral degrees in Civil Engineering from Columbia University and Structural Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome.
Fall 2026 CIV Seminar Series: SeyedAlireza Mirghafouri
PhD Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, SBU
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
"Coupled Flow–Soil–Structure Interaction under Tsunami-Like Bores"
CIV Undergrad Chat and Chew: Making Connections with the Career Center
Monday, November 9, 2026
during Campus Lifetime (12:30 to 1:50 pm)
231 Engineering
Fall 2026 CIV Seminar Series: Joseph Chow
Professor, Tandon School of Engineering, NYU
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
"Evaluating Emerging Mobility Technologies for a Sustainable Built Environment"
Fall 2026 CIV Seminar Series: Guanyu Huang
Assistant Professor; Department of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine; SBU
Tuesday, November 17, 2026
2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
"Application of Satellite Remote Sensing for Air Quality Management"
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GE Vernova
Tuesday, November 24, 2026
2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
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Fall 2026 CIV Seminar Series: Arindam Banerjee
Paul B. Reinhold Endowed Professor and Department Chair, P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, Lehigh University
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2:00 to 3:20 pm
211 Frey Hall
"Turbulence by Design - From Controlled Flows to Turbine Wakes"
Past Events