CHARACTERISATION OF DAMAGE IN WIND TURBINE BLADE TESTS USING TSA & IRT IMAGES

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Wind Energy)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr AG Dutton
Engineering and Instrumentation
STFC (Science & Technology Facilities Council)

Standard

EPSRC

01 April 2000

30 June 2001

15 months

£50,290

Energy

South East

Renewables and Energy Technologies -- Process Environment and Sustainability

Dr AG Dutton, Engineering and Instrumentation, STFC (Science & Technology Facilities Council)

Project Contact, Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands

Two wind turbine blade fatigue tests from an existing, funded programme will be monitored with additional instrumentation. Piezoelectric AE sensors on the blades (already funded) will indicate the location of damage events. This project will make full-field temperature and thermoelastic stress measurements at regular intervals throughout the tests at anticipated problem areas and at any area with high levels of AE activity. The first blade to be monitored will also contain fibre optic temperature and strain sensors. Correlation of the full-field temperature and TSA results with the fibre optic sensor output will be carried out to assess the feasibility of using fibre optic sensors to detect damage in blades in service. The second blade to be monitored will contain a deliberate manufacturing flaw. A database will be compiled of all the data from the tests (including the AE and fibre optic signals) and used to assess whether some parameter(s) can be defined which characterise thedamage and remaining lifetime of the blade. To make maximum use of the data obtained, it is proposed to make it available to members of the EPSRC Structural Integrity and Damage Assessment (SIDA) network (of which the Principal investigator is a member)

01/06/07