Objective
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
In order to stay competitive in the fabrication of rotor blades for wind turbines European manufacturers have to modify their current production technology and change their material choice. The current production process for rotor blades is very labour intensive, causing high production costs and long production cycles. To maintain the current price/performance ratio of a rotor blade the production process must change from labour intensive to capital intensive. This means mechanization and automation of the composites manufacturing process.
An other important development is the ongoing upscaling of wind turbines and rotor blades, which causes logistic problems. Rotor blades nowadays have a length (up to 33 meters) giving rise to transport and assembly problems. By changing from single blade production to series production of smaller components, the logistical problems will be less emphatic. Especially when the components can be assembled locally at the wind turbine site.
With the growing environmental concern in Europe an environmental friendly design of rotor blades will be of more importance. Beside the marketing advantages and recyclability, the use of alternative materials may offer great technical and economical advantages, e.g. reduction in weight and lowering of material costs. The alternative materials are of course also environmental friendly, e.g. less toxic, recyclable and renewable.
The project therefore aims at the development of rotor blades and rotor blade components which use low-cost environmental friendly materials, and which in the long term can be produced with a mechanized and automated production technology.
TECHNICAL APPROACH
The following tasks are envisaged by the consortium (rotor blade manufacturer, research organisation, engineering and consultancy company and a company linked to end-users of wind turbines):
- material selection based on an environmental life cycle analysis - material production and characterization
- development and testing of joining techniques for rotor blade components - rotor blade and rotor blade component (re)design
- prototype building
- prototype testing
EXPECTED ACHIEVEMENTS AND EXPLOITATION
On completion of the project there will be four main deliverables which deserve special attention for exploitation:
- environmental friendly materials for the exploitation of wind-energy - joining technologies for rotor blade components
- prototype of a low-cost, environmental friendly rotor blade design - prototype of a low-cost, environmental friendly rotor blade design assembled from components
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering manufacturing engineering
- engineering and technology materials engineering composites
- social sciences sociology industrial relations automation
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy wind energy
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Programme(s)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
6812 AR Arnhem
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.