Marine renewable energy systems (floating wind, tidal stream turbines and wave energy converters) increasingly operate as hybrid offshore platforms that share power converters and energy storage. Their reliability is threatened by two main issues: electrical, mechanical and control faults, and biofouling, i.e. the accumulation of marine organisms on submerged structures. Biofouling increases drag, reduces converter efficiency, loads the structure and alters the thermal behaviour of subsea cables, which leads to higher maintenance costs and unplanned downtime. No single measurement is sufficient to assess it. Photogrammetry is sensitive to turbidity and lighting, thermal methods are uncertain, and mooring-tension monitoring only provides global estimates. In addition, a loss of power caused by fouling can be confused with a power-electronics fault. Recent AI methods are mostly based on a single data source, typically underwater images, and are rarely validated on hybrid platforms. This internship is part of a collaborative research effort at IRDL (UMR CNRS 6027, Brest), building on a recent PhD thesis on biofouling detection in tidal stream turbines. It aims to develop and test a lightweight multimodal AI pipeline that fuses underwater images, SCADA signals and environmental measurements to detect and estimate biofouling and to diagnose faults, even when some sensors are missing or degraded. The pipeline will be tested in simulation and, if time allows, on a real-time microgrid platform (OPAL-RT) with injected faults.
The Dupuy de Lôme Research Institute (IRDL, UMR CNRS 6027) is a leading French laboratory for marine mechanical systems and engineering sciences, supervised by Université Bretagne Sud (lead institution), Université de Bretagne Occidentale, ENSTA Bretagne and ENI Brest. With about 300 members, it is organised into five research hubs located in Lorient, Vannes, Pontivy and Brest, and covers materials and polymers, mechanics of structures, fluid–structure interaction, energy systems and marine engineering. Its applications address shipbuilding, offshore construction, marine renewable energy, transport and industrial energy systems. The internship will take place in the Brest site, within the research hub PTR4 “Energy Systems and Thermal Processes”. Its “Energy and Systems” axis develops detection and diagnostic tools for faults in electromechanical systems, so that they can operate continuously, efficiently and safely under control. The applications focus on marine renewable resources (offshore wind, tidal and wave energy), together with electric and hybrid vehicles. The group combines knowledge of fault and degradation phenomena in energy conversion systems with signal processing, control and machine learning, in order to deliver predictive maintenance and resilient operation in harsh marine environments.
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