Manufacture of High-Performance Tidal Turbine Blades Using Advanced Composite Manufacturing Technologies

After wind and solar energy, tidal energy presents the most prominent opportunity for generating energy from renewable sources. However, due to the harsh environment that tidal turbines are deployed in, a number of design and manufacture challenges are presented to engineers. As a consequence of the harsh environment, the loadings on the turbine blades are much greater than that on wind turbine blades and, therefore, require advanced solutions to be able to survive in this environment. In order to avoid issues with corrosion, tidal turbine blades are mainly manufactured from fibre reinforced polymer composite material. As a result, the main design and manufacture challenges are related to the main structural aspects of the blade, which are the spar and root, and the connection between the blade and the turbine hub. Therefore, in this paper, a range of advanced manufacturing technologies for producing a 1 MW tidal turbine blade are developed. The main novelty in this study comes with the challenges that are overcome due to the size of the blade, resulting in thickness composite sections (> 130 mm in places), the fast changes in geometry over a short length that isn’t the case for wind blades and the required durability of the material in the marine environment. These advances aim to increase the likelihood of survival of tidal turbine blades in operation for a design life of 20 + years.

Influence of Material and Effects of Tidal Turbine Blade: A Review

In the past few years, tidal turbines have been developed to exploit the kinetic energy of seawater currents to generate electrical energy. The blade is the greater essential part of the tidal mills. It is designed in line with hydrodynamic science so that you can seize the most power from marine currents and supposed to face up to the environment marine conditions for long intervals. The cloth choice of the tidal turbine blades in the sort of extreme surroundings performs a essential role inside the efficiency of the tidal turbine. This paper discusses vital factors that affect the overall performance and the sturdiness of the tidal modern turbine together with cavitation, biofouling and corrosion. This paper intends to offer a quick evaluation of the characteristics of available materials for tidal modern turbine blades. Apart from the traditional substances, new alternative materials undertaken are discussed.

Fault Diagnosis of Horizontal Axis Turbine with Different Twist Angle to Reduce Stress under Failure Thrust Force

Five types of configurations of tidal turbine blade including validation model have been considered with different profile tidal turbine blade with twist angle of 9, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 and 12 degrees. An optimized model of tidal turbine blades is developed. The simulation of the optimized model i.e. 12 degree twist angle gives minimum value of stress and deformation at different loads i.e. 441, 271, 272 and 610N which has optimized and converged result compared to respected models of tidal turbine blade, it has also been observed that stress and deformation was reduced at static load of 610N in 12 degree twist angle tidal turbine blade with the Zylon, Kevlar and CFRP material, thus the observed fault is diagnosed in this present research work. The configuration of optimized model gives maximum convergence on all parameters amongst all the configurations used.

Erosion Mapping of Through-Thickness Toughened Powder Epoxy Gradient Glass-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) Plates for Tidal Turbine Blades

Erosion of tidal turbine blades in the marine environment is a major material challenge due to the high thrust and torsional loading at the rotating surfaces, which limits the ability to harness energy from tidal sources. Polymer–matrix composites can exhibit leading-blade edge erosion due to marine flows containing salt and solid particles of sand. Anti-erosion coatings can be used for more ductility at the blade surface, but the discontinuity between the coating and the stiffer composite can be a site of failure. Therefore, it is desirable to have a polymer matrix with a gradient of toughness, with a tougher, more ductile polymer matrix at the blade surface, transitioning gradually to the high stiffness matrix needed to provide high composite mechanical properties. In this study, multiple powder epoxy systems were investigated, and two were selected to manufacture unidirectional glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (UD-GFRP) plates with different epoxy ratios at the surface and interior plies, leading to a toughening gradient within the plate. The gradient plates were then mechanically compared to their standard counterparts. Solid particle erosion testing was carried out at various test conditions and parameters on UD-GFRP specimens in a slurry environment. The experiments performed were based on a model of the UK marine environment for a typical tidal energy farm with respect to the concentration of saltwater and the size of solid particle erodent. The morphologies of the surfaces were examined by SEM. Erosion maps were generated based on the result showing significant differences for materials of different stiffness in such conditions.