NABANITA DATTA

Nabanita Datta is a Wind Turbine technologist, specializing in offshore structural design and analysis. She works as Lead Engineer, Loads and Controls Value Engineering (Offshore team), Vestas Technology R&D Chennai Pvt. Ltd., Chennai.

She did her 5-year integrated (Dual Degree) B.Tech and M.Tech in Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, from IIT Kharagpur during 2001-06, focusing on hydrodynamics. Following this, she went on to do her PhD (2006-2010) in vibration and fluid-structure interaction from the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Prof. Armin W. Troesch was her doctoral supervisor.

After her PhD, she worked at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur as a Visitng faculty (June 2011- May 2013), Assistant Professor (May 2013 - Oct 2020), and Associate Professor (Oct 2020-June 2023). Her primary areas of research have been theoretical and experimental investigations of vibrations and fluid-structure interaction. She has over 50+ international publications in top-tier journals and conferences. During 2015-17, she worked on hydro-kinetic energy extraction from vortex-induced vibration. 

During the calendar year of 2018, she took a sabbatical from IIT Kharagpur and worked as a vibration and structural dynamics consultant for offshore wind turbines at the General Electric Global Research (Mechanics & Design), John F. Welch Technology Centre, Bengaluru. This is from where she developed a deep interest in working in the growing and futuristic field of renewable energy, particularly wind energy. 

During 2019-2023, she forayed into low-cost product design of a small horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT). Armed with 22-months of on-site campus wind data, she gathered a team of talented, hardworking, motivated undergraduate students across six different disciplines of engineering, and designed a 250 W rated power (at 4.2 m/s rated wind speed), 6.8 m rotor diameter stall-regulated 3-bladed horizontal axis wind turbine, with active control. A complete in-house design, construction, fabrication, and assembly saw the participation of faculty from the disciplines of Aerospace, Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering. In June 2023, the wind turbine succeeded in capturing power. The active control and IoT are scheduled to be incorporated by June 2024.

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