Fracture Monitoring of Composite Wind Turbine Blade Using High-Speed Bragg Grating Sensor System

2011 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 79-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyung Joon Bang ◽  
Soo Hyun Kim

This paper introduces a FBG (fiber Bragg grating) based AE (acoustic emission) sensing system for use in health monitoring of composite wind turbine blades. In this study, a multiplexing high speed FBG sensor system was developed with a spectrometer-type demodulator based on a linear photo detector. Pencil break test was performed using an FBG sensor and the results were compared with the results of piezo-based AE sensor. For the performance test of fracture sensing in composite materials, a down-scaled wind turbine blade was fabricated and drop impact tests were performed. Arrayed 4 FBG sensors were installed in the skin of wind turbine blade and impacts of 15 J energy were applied by a drop weight. The frequency characteristics of impact induced AE signals were examined with short-time Fourier transform focused on the leading waves. Finally, the onset of fractures in composite structure was successfully assessed using arrayed FBG sensors.

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sutrisno Sutrisno ◽  
Deendarlianto Deendarlianto ◽  
Indarto Indarto ◽  
Sigit Iswahyudi ◽  
Muhammad Agung Bramantya ◽  
...  

The research on three dimensional (3-D) wind turbine blades has been introduced (Sutrisno, Prajitno, Purnomo, & B.W. Setyawan, 2016). In the current experiment, the 3-D wind turbine blades would be fitted with helicopter-like blade tips and additional fins to the blade hubs to demonstrate some laminarizing features. It was found that additional helicopter-like blade tip to the turbine blade creates strong laminar flows over the surface of the blade tips. Supplementary, finned hub, fitted to the blade body, creates rolled-up vortex flows, weakens the blade stall growth development, especially for blades at high-speed wind. A proposed mathematical form of modified lifting line model has been developed to pursue further 3-d blade development study of 3-d wind turbine blade. Rolled up vortex effects, developed by finned of the base hub, has been acknowledged could demolish the turbulent region, as well as laminarize the stall domain to intensify the induced wind turbine blade lift.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessio Castorrini ◽  
Paolo Venturini ◽  
Fabrizio Gerboni ◽  
Alessandro Corsini ◽  
Franco Rispoli

Abstract Rain erosion of wind turbine blades represents an interesting topic of study due to its non-negligible impact on annual energy production of the wind farms installed in rainy sites. A considerable amount of recent research works has been oriented to this subject, proposing rain erosion modelling, performance losses prediction, structural issues studies, etc. This work aims to present a new method to predict the damage on a wind turbine blade. The method is applied here to study the effect of different rain conditions and blade coating materials, on the damage produced by the rain over a representative section of a reference 5MW turbine blade operating in normal turbulence wind conditions.


Author(s):  
Alka Gupta ◽  
Abdulrahman Alsultan ◽  
R. S. Amano ◽  
Sourabh Kumar ◽  
Andrew D. Welsh

Energy is the heart of today’s civilization and the demand seems to be increasing with our growing population. Alternative energy solutions are the future of energy, whereas the fossil-based fuels are finite and deemed to become extinct. The design of the wind turbine blade is the main governing factor that affects power generation from the wind turbine. Different airfoils, angle of twist and blade dimensions are the parameters that control the efficiency of the wind turbine. This study is aimed at investigating the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine blade. In the present paper, we discuss innovative blade designs using the NACA 4412 airfoil, comparing them with a straight swept blade. The wake region was measured in the lab with a straight blade. All the results with different designs of blades were compared for their performance. A complete three-dimensional computational analysis was carried out to compare the power generation in each case for different wind speeds. It was found from the numerical analysis that the slotted blade yielded the most power generation among the other blade designs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1014 ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
Zhi Qiang Xu ◽  
Jian Huang

Wind turbines consists of three key parts, namely, wind wheels (including blades, hub, etc.), cabin (including gearboxes, motors, controls, etc.) and the tower and Foundation. Wind turbine wheel is the most important part ,which is made up of blades and hubs. Blade has a good aerodynamic shape, which will produce aerodynamic in the airflow rotation, converting wind energy into mechanical energy, and then, driving the generator into electrical energy by gearbox pace. Wind turbine operates in the natural environment, their load wind turbine blades are more complex. Therefore load calculations and strength analysis for wind turbine design is very important. Wind turbine blades are core components of wind turbines, so understanding of their loads and dynamics by which the load on the wind turbine blade design is of great significance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Bin Qu ◽  
Zhou Sun ◽  
Fang Feng ◽  
Yan Li ◽  
Guoqiang Tong ◽  
...  

This paper describes the method of preparing strong hydrophobic polypyrrole (PPy) on wind turbine blades. The water contact angle of strong hydrophobic PPy coatings was 127.2°. The strong hydrophobic PPy coatings exhibited excellent anti-icing properties. The maximum icing weight of strong hydrophobic PPy coating blade was almost 0.10 g while the maximum icing weight of no coating blade was found to be 26.13 g. The maximum icing thickness of a strong hydrophobic PPy coating blade was only 1.08 mm. The current research will provide a better technique to create anti-icing coatings on wind turbine blades and other outdoor equipment.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 3330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianhua Xu ◽  
Zhonghua Han ◽  
Xiaochao Yan ◽  
Wenping Song

A new airfoil family, called NPU-MWA (Northwestern Polytechnical University Multi-megawatt Wind-turbine A-series) airfoils, was designed to improve both aerodynamic and structural performance, with the outboard airfoils being designed at high design lift coefficient and high Reynolds number, and the inboard airfoils being designed as flat-back airfoils. This article aims to design a multi-megawatt wind turbine blade in order to demonstrate the advantages of the NPU-MWA airfoils in improving wind energy capturing and structural weight reduction. The distributions of chord length and twist angle for a 5 MW wind turbine blade are optimized by a Kriging surrogate model-based optimizer, with aerodynamic performance being evaluated by blade element-momentum theory. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations solver was used to validate the improvement in aerodynamic performance. Results show that compared with an existing NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) 5 MW blade, the maximum power coefficient of the optimized NPU 5 MW blade is larger, and the chord lengths at all span-wise sections are dramatically smaller, resulting in a significant structural weight reduction (9%). It is shown that the NPU-MWA airfoils feature excellent aerodynamic and structural performance for the design of multi-megawatt wind turbine blades.


Author(s):  
Prenil Poulose ◽  
Zhong Hu

Strength evaluation and failure prediction on a modern composite wind turbine blade have been conducted using finite element analysis. A 3-dimensional finite element model has been developed. Stresses and deflections in the blade under extreme storm conditions have been investigated for different materials. The conventional wood design turbine blade has been compared with the advanced E-glass fiber and Carbon epoxy composite blades. Strength has been analyzed and compared for blades with different laminated layer stacking sequences and fiber orientations for a composite material. Safety design and failure prediction have been conducted based on the different failure criteria. The simulation error estimation has been evaluated. Simulation results have shown that finite element analysis is crucial for designing and optimizing composite wind turbine blades.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (22) ◽  
pp. 4742
Author(s):  
Bo Zhou ◽  
Xueyan Zhang ◽  
He Li

Air bubble is a manufacturing defect that is common to composite wind turbine blades, which might evolve into cracks, leading to failure under load. The evolution and critical state of air bubble are studied to establish a condition assessment method for blade quality control. A method that is based on rheological theory is proposed to recognize the critical state by temperature jump. The air bubble is regarded as a null set and the temperature distribution of bubble defect is affected by the volumetric strain energy under tensile load. An infrared camera can detect a temperature jump when mechanical characteristics drastically change due to crack formation. A tensile fatigue test was carried out to verify the accuracy of this method. The relative error between the measured and calculated temperature rise at the critical moment was less than 7%. Additionally, the specimen with [0/90]s ply angles is more favorable to maintain the structural stability than the others. The method in this paper establishes a quantitative relationship between the meso-defect and macro mechanical properties. The defect severity of wind turbine blade can be defined by infrared imaging technology.


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