Germany’s Fraunhofer IWES and Denmark’s DTU Wind Energy are joining forces on a project testing the structural behaviour of wind turbine blades.
The €17.6m Reliablade initiative will develop a 40-metre blade design that will be used to manufacture two structures for testing at Fraunhofer IWES.
Blades will be intentionally damaged under controlled conditions, including production errors, such as inferior bond lines and damage in the composite or sandwich materials.
After testing, the blades will then be sent to DTU Wind Energy, where the behaviour of the damaged parts will be assessed during full scale blade tests.
The partners will also conduct subcomponent tests and develop fatigue models as well as damage prediction methods.
“The results obtained will allow the industry to make progress towards improving cost-efficiency, cutting energy production costs and increasing its competitiveness internationally,” they said.
Fraunhofer IWES project manager Florian Sayer said: “We want to improve the understanding of the structural behaviour of rotor blades.
“Therefore, we have developed a project in which we have control over the blade design, the manufacturing and the test and can investigate the damage process over the entire blade life with advanced numerical and experimental methods.
“This is truly unique in the wind turbine blade research and enables us to validate complex damage models.”
DTU Wind Energy project manager Kim Branner said: “The vision for the project is to develop methodologies for design, operation and maintenance of wind turbine rotor blades using a digital twin of every blade manufactured.
“We will then use this digital twin to follow the current state and predicting the future state of each blade during its entire life cycle using an automated condition monitoring approach.”
Other partners on the project are the Leibniz University in Hanover, Vestas, LM Wind Power, IBM Denmark, FORCE Technology, Siemens Industry Software, CEKO Sensors, Dantec Dynamics, Blade Test Centre, Zebicon and Olsen Wings.