MS#05.6 Advances in Blade Structural Testing

P. GREAVES¹, M. ROSEMEIER²
¹ Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult|² Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems - IWES

Structures, structural integrity, materials

This MS would focus on the latest advancements in blade structural testing. There is increasing evidence from the field that as blades grow in size the frequency of blade structural failures (both catastrophic and repairable) is growing. This has been attributed to the squeezing of safety margins and drive to lower costs, but full scale testing has a big role to play in ensuring that new designs of blades are fit for purpose,

Potential areas to be presented include:

• New methods to excite the blade during fatigue testing
• Segmented test methods for very large blades
• Consideration of torsional loading in the design process and testing
• Bi-axial fatigue testing to consider interaction of edgewise and flapwise loading
• Testing for lifetime extension
• Novel methods for instrumenting blades under test