Scott Hughes

Inspection and monitoring of wind turbine blade-embedded wave defects during fatigue testing

The research presented in this article focuses on a 9-m CX-100 wind turbine blade, designed by a team led by Sandia National Laboratories and manufactured by TPI Composites Inc. The key difference between the 9-m blade and baseline CX-100 blades is that this blade contains fabric wave defects of controlled geometry inserted at specified locations along the blade length. The defect blade was tested at the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory using a schedule of cycles at increasing load level until failure was detected. Researchers used digital image correlation, shearography, acoustic emission, fiber-optic strain sensing, thermal imaging, and piezoelectric sensing as structural health monitoring techniques. This article provides a comparison of the sensing results of these different structural health monitoring approaches to detect the defects and track the resultant damage from the initial fatigue cycle to final failure.

Monitoring Multi-Site Damage Growth During Quasi-Static Testing of a Wind Turbine Blade using a Structural Neural System:

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of a wind turbine blade using a Structural Neural System (SNS) is described in this paper. Wind turbine blades are composite structures with complex geometry and sections that are built of different materials. The 3D structure, large size, anisotropic material properties, and the potential for damage to occur anywhere on the blade makes damage detection a significant challenge. A SNS based on acoustic emission (AE) monitoring (passive listening) was developed for practical low cost SHM of large composite structures such as wind turbine blades. The SNS was tested to detect damage initiation and propagation on a 9 m long wind turbine blade during a quasi-static proof test to failure at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory test facility in Golden, Colorado. Twelve piezoelectric sensors were bonded on the surface of the wind turbine blade and connected to form four continuous sensors which were used in the SNS to determine damage locations. Although 12 sensors monitored the wind turbine blade, the SNS produces only two analog output signals; one time signal to determine and locate damage, and a second time signal containing combined AE waveforms. Testing of the wind turbine blade produced some interesting results. After initial emissions due to settling of the blade diminished, damage initiated at one location on the blade. As the load was increased, damage occurred in a sequence at three other locations until there was a catastrophic buckling failure of the blade. The buckling occurred above the design load for the blade, and was due to the carbon spar cap disbonding from the fiberglass shear web under compressive bending stress. The SNS indicated the general area where the damage started and how the damage progressed, which is valuable information for verifying and improving the blade design and the manufacturing procedure. Strain gages on the blade did not provide a clear indication of damage until buckling occurred. A major outcome of this testing was to provide confidence that SHM of large composite structures that have complex geometry and multiple materials is practical using a simple, low cost SNS.

Impact Loading and Damage Detection in a Carbon Composite TX-100 Wind Turbine Rotor Blade

An experimental 9-m composite rotor blade with integrated carbon-carbon features and an outer fiber direction of 20o was fatigued to failure. The blade initially developed a crack at 65o on the high pressure side near the 4.6-m station at 2.5 M cycles and the crack then coalesced to the 20o fiber direction until the test was stopped at 4 M cycles. An array of highsensitivity triaxial accelerometers, low-frequency capacitive accelerometers, and piezoelectric actuators with force sensors was distributed over the surface of the blade to monitor the loading and blade damage. A triaxial accelerometer at the tip was used to measure the tip deflection in the flap, lead-lag, and root-tip directions throughout the test. In-plane displacement measurements between the damage and the root were found to be sensitive to the crack growth and direction. The dynamic features of the rotor blade were sensitive to the variation in ambient temperature. Active diagnostics with the method of virtual forces was sensitive to the damage for in-plane measurements following adjustment for thermal effects. Impact identification was demonstrated with 93% accuracy of the location and within 1.3% accuracy of the magnitude. Modal filtering provided a means of monitoring the fatigue loading in near-real time. Second-order harmonics excited by the fatigue system were shown to exist at the tip in the lead-lag and root-tip directions. Findings of this test will be instrumental in future development of accelerometer-based wind turbine rotor blade monitoring.

Full-field inspection of a wind turbine blade using three-dimensional digital image correlation

Increasing demand and deployment of wind power has led to a significant increase in the number of wind-turbine blades manufactured globally. As the physical size and number of turbines deployed grows, the probability of manufacturing defects being present in composite turbine blade fleets also increases. As both capital blade costs, and operational and maintenance costs, increase for larger turbine systems the need for large-scale inspection and monitoring of the state of structural health of turbine blades during manufacturing and operation critically increase. One method for locating and quantifying manufacturing defects, while also allowing for the in-situ measurement of the structural health of blades, is through the observation of the full-field state of deformation and strain of the blade. Static tests were performed on a nine-meter CX-100 composite turbine blade to extract full-field displacement and strain measurements using threedimensional digital image correlation (3D DIC). Measurements were taken at several angles near the blade root, including along the high-pressure surface, low-pressure surface, and along the trailing edge of the blade. The overall results indicate that the measurement approach can clearly identify failure locations and discontinuities in the blade curvature under load. Post-processing of the data using a stitching technique enables the shape and curvature of the entire blade to be observed for a large-scale wind turbine blade for the first time. The experiment demonstrates the feasibility of the approach and reveals that the technique readily can be scaled up to accommodate utility-scale blades. As long as a trackable pattern is applied to the surface of the blade, measurements can be made in-situ when a blade is on a manufacturing floor, installed in a test fixture, or installed on a rotating turbine. The results demonstrate the great potential of the optical measurement technique and its capability for use in the wind industry for large-area inspection.

Inflow Measurement in a Tidal Strait for Deploying Tidal Current Turbines: Lessons, Opportunities and Challenges

Tidal energy has received increasing attention over the past decade. This increasing focus on capturing the energy from tidal currents has brought about the development of many designs for tidal current turbines. Several of these turbines are progressing rapidly from design to prototype and pre-commercial stages. As these systems near commercial development, it becomes increasingly important that their performance be validated through laboratory tests (e.g., towing tank tests) and sea tests. Several different turbine configurations have been tested recently. The test results show significant differences in turbine performance between laboratory tests, numerical simulations, and sea tests. Although the mean velocity of the current is highly predictable, evidence suggests a critical factor in these differences is the unsteady inflow. To understand the physics and the effect of the inflow on turbine performance and reliability, Verdant Power (Verdant) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have engaged in a partnership to address the engineering challenges facing marine current turbines. As part of this effort, Verdant deployed Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) equipment to collect data from a kinetic hydropower system (KHPS) installation at the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project in the East River in New York City. The ADCP collected data for a little more than one year, and this data is critical for properly defining the operating environment needed for marine systems. This paper summarizes the Verdant-NREL effort to study inflow data provided by the fixed, bottom-mounted ADCP instrumentation and how the data is processed using numerical tools. It briefly reviews previous marine turbine tests and inflow measurements, provides background information from the RITE project, and describes the test turbine design and instrumentation setup. This paper also provides an analysis of the measured time domain data and a detailed discussion of shear profiling, turbulence intensity, and time-dependent fluctuations of the inflow. The paper concludes with suggestions for future work. The analysis provided in this paper will benefit future turbine operation studies. In addition, this study, as well as future studies in this topic area, will be beneficial to environmental policy makers and fishing communities.Copyright

Fatigue Testing of 9 m Carbon Fiber Wind Turbine Research Blades

Fatigue testing was conducted on Carbon Experimental and Twist-Bend Experimental (CX-100 and TX-100) 9-m wind turbine research blades. The CX-100 blade was designed to investigate the use of a carbon spar cap to reduce weight and increase stiffness while being incorporated using conventional manufacturing techniques. The TX-100 blade used carbon in the outboard portion of the skin to produce twist-bend coupling to passively alleviate aerodynamic loads. In the fatigue tests, the CX-100 blade was loaded by a single hydraulic cylinder while the TX-100 blade was loaded via a hydraulically-actuated resonant loading system called the Universal Resonant Exciter. The blades were outfitted with approximately 30 strain gages as well as displacement and load sensors. Both blades survived to cycle counts sufficient to demonstrate a 20-year operational life. The CX-100 blade failed at approximately 1.6 million cycles because of a buckle and crack that formed and grew just outboard of max-chord. The TX-100 blade failed because of a crack that grew from the termination point of the spar cap at the midspan of the blade. This paper covers the results of the fatigue tests.

AN INTELLIGENT BLADE FOR WIND TURBINES

Simulation and testing to develop an Intelligent Blade for wind turbines is presented in this paper. The concept blade has an integrated sensor system for structural health monitoring that will continuously monitor the condition of the blade, warn of initiating damage, and provide instant information that can be used to regulate loading in the blade to reduce or prevent fatigue damage. This can decrease maintenance costs, improve the reliability of wind power, and may make wind energy more affordable. Modeling and simulation of wave propagation in a plate was performed and different configurations of active and passive piezoceramic sensor systems were evaluated and shown to be capable of measuring propagating strain waves and identifying damage. A preliminary experiment to determine the damage detection capability of the sensors was done during a static test of a wind turbine blade. The stress wave propagation characteristics of the blade were monitored as the load level on the blade was increased until blade failure occurred. The effects of the blade stress and curvature on wave propagation need further study, but the results indicate that the technique has the potential for the detection of evolving damage in composite wind turbine blades.