Objective
Objectives
Efficient and well defined quality control becomes even more important in today's mass production of wind turbine rotor blades. The quality control procedures and manufacturing tolerances must be based on realistic requirements concerning the intended properties and economy of the rotor blades. Poor manufacturing quality of the blade profiles or twist distribution will affect power performance and noise emission. The project aims at identifying and avoiding such problems and will give recommendations and guidelines on the quality control of rotor blades. The project also aims at drafting improved and commonly agreed quality control procedures and measures for rotor blades which can be applied by the manufacturers as "house quality procedure" under ISO 9000 and EN 45000. It is a first step towards a European Standard for rotor blade quality control.
Technical Approach
The project involves nine partners: Three institutes (DEWI, CRES and CIEMAT), four blade manufacturers (Abeking&Rasmussen, AERPAC, LM Glasfiber, LM Aero Construct) and two wind turbine manufacturers (AN Maschinenbau, Tacke Windtechnik). DEWI and CIEMAT will survey the applied quality control procedures and measures and investigate the changes of rotor blade properties caused by manufacturing deviations. They work out commonly agreed on and improved quality control procedures and measures. The main work of the project is done by the institutes in order to ensure that the industrial participants do not have access to the confidential information of their competitors. CRES will perform an analytic and stochastic investigation to simulate the influence of blade tolerances on the power and energy capture of a rotor. The WEC manufacturers AN Maschinenbau and Tacke Windtechnik will provide information on the required quality for their rotor blades and related problems and failures.
Airfoil contours of the mould, and a new and an aged rotor blade built in the very same mould are taken. The deviations of airfoil contours will be evaluated by means of comparing the calculated aerodynamic behaviour of the manufactured rotor blades with the intended ones. The results will give indications for the allowable manufacturing tolerances. From the information gained the institutes will draft recommendations for quality control procedures for discussion with industry. Harmonised and improved rotor blade quality control procedures and measures will be recommended for application by industry.
Expected Achievements and Exploitation
Manufacturers, WEC-operators, financing institutions and insurance companies will benefit from a harmonisation of rotor blade quality control, because blade quality will become comparable and failure risks will be diminished.
The drafted harmonised and improved quality control procedures and measures for rotor blade manufacturing will be applied by the participating industry.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
Wilhelmshaven
Germany
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Participants (8)
27806 Lemwerden
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7602 KD Almelo
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19009 Raphina (Pikeermi)
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28040 Madrid
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76891 Bundenthal
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6640 Lunderskov
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28237 Bremen
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48499 Salzbergen
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