NEXT GENERATION MATERIALS FOR WIND TURBINES

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Denmark, is one of the biggest wind turbine manufacturers in the world. Within UPWARDS, Siemens Gamesa brings its expertise related to modelling, design, and manufacturing of wind turbines, in order to make them more efficient and reliable.

Siemens Gamesa’s deep expertise in composite blade design and modelling, helps to further develop high-fidelity material failure simulation models of an operation wind turbine. Victoria Bloodworth from Blade Design, Structures Department, works along with Soeren Henrichsen on modelling of structural materials for wind turbines.

Recently, samples of materials were done using Siemens internal R&D processes. Material were sent to SINTEF (Norway) and Aalborg University (Denmark), in order to perform further testing phase. An example of manufacturing processes can be seen on the picture below:

 

Wind turbines blade lane. Methods used by Siemens Gamesa within UPWARDS project.

 

Next steps to be done are the representative tests. Tests will be done on the part of the wind turbine in order to see if the module can predict the failure. The objectives are development of progressive material damage models and simulation tools for static and fatigue-driven damage development in laminated composite wind turbine blades in order to evaluate the structural performance and integrity.

 

by Gary Grima & Olena Malchyk, Wavestone

2020-03-24