Designed to extend the remaining useful life of wind turbines through the use of Predictive Health Management

Buffalo, NY -- (ReleaseWire) -- 06/05/2014 --Today, Sentient Science announced they have reached a computational milestone in predicting the remaining use life of wind turbine gearboxes and other rotating mechanical components throughout North America. In the past six months Sentient has run 1,500,000 gearbox component and system computational tests on the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research High Performance Computing Cluster. This infrastructure has allowed Sentient to scale their life extension solutions for wind turbine owners and other industrial systems. This is a significant number of computational tests, compared to traditional methods for O&M planning, including conditional-based maintenance and physical testing of critical components.

“The work we are doing is very new to the industry; many companies do other simulations, but no one is currently doing computational prognostics and life extension. Our relationship with the University at Buffalo, particularly the Center for Computational Research (CCR) has played a major role in the rapid growth of our company especially in the energy sectors. By utilizing 8,000 processors at the Center for Computational Research, we are able to provide our customers with the computational testing services that they need to extend the life of their assets before failure,” said Ward Thomas, President and CEO of Sentient Corporation.

Sentient is providing life extension solutions for GE 1.5 MW wind turbines, Clipper 2.5 MW wind turbines, BP, First Wind, Penoles Energy, John Deere, Sikorsky Aircraft, Energy Northwest, Boeing, Minnesota Power, Westar, Moog, the National Science Foundation, US Army, US Navy, US Air force and others.

“In addition to supporting research and education, one of CCR’s core missions is economic development. We are very pleased to be able to provide a leading-edge, high-tech company, such as Sentient, with this level of support and to see firsthand how it is able to help transform their technology. Thanks to our recent Empire State Development award, we look forward in the very near future to installing a large compute cluster that is designed specifically to support industrial users, such as Sentient,” said Dr. Thomas Furlani, Director of UB’s CCR.

About Sentient Science:
Sentient Science, headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y, is the leading company providing prognostic technology services that extend the remaining useful life of mechanical systems. Since 2011, Sentient provides technology to predict how cracks initiate in materials and how those cracks grow under real operating conditions. Today, this technology is offered commercially as computational tools and predictive health monitoring services to help companies extend the life and performance of critical components and systems in design, testing, procurement, and service. By interfacing prognostics models through private networks to fielded assets for Prognostics Health Management (PHM), Sentient Science supports what GE and others now call the Industrial Internet.

About the Center for Computational Research:
The Center for Computational Research (CCR), part of the University at Buffalo (UB) is a leading academic supercomputing facility. CCR maintains a high-performance computing environment, high-end visualization laboratories, and support staff with expertise in computing, visualization, and networking. The mission of CCR is to (1) enable research and scholarship at UB by providing faculty with access to high-performance computing and visualization resources, (2) provide education, outreach, and training in Western New York, and (3) foster economic development and job creation in Western New York by providing local industry with access to advanced computing resources, including hardware, software and consulting services.

For more on the relationship between the University at Buffalo and Sentient Science download our case study here.