Damage mitigation techniques in wind turbine blades: A review

Shohag, Abu; Hammel, Emily; Olawale, David; Okoli, Okenwa I.

doi:10.1177/0309524x17706862

Cited by 75 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 108 publications

(189 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…WT blades exhibit the highest failure rate (FR ∼ 0.2) of any WT component (Zhu and Li, 2018). The most expensive repair and longest repair times are associated with blades (Shohag et al, 2017). Estimates suggest that the average cost of blade repair of an onshore turbine is approximately USD 30 000, with replacement costs of ∼ USD 200 000 (Mishnaevsky Jr., 2019).…”

Section: Introduction and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radar-derived precipitation climatology for wind turbine blade leading edge erosion

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion (LEE) is a potentially significant source of revenue loss for wind farm operators. Thus, it is important to advance understanding of the underlying causes, to generate geospatial estimates of erosion potential to provide guidance in pre-deployment planning, and ultimately to advance methods to mitigate this effect and extend blade lifetimes. This study focuses on the second issue and presents a novel approach to characterizing the erosion potential across the contiguous USA based solely on publicly available data products from the National Weather Service dual-polarization radar. The approach is described in detail and illustrated using six locations distributed across parts of the USA that have substantial wind turbine deployments. Results from these locations demonstrate the high spatial variability in precipitationinduced erosion potential, illustrate the importance of low-probability high-impact events to cumulative annual total kinetic energy transfer and emphasize the importance of hail as a damage vector.

show abstract

Section: Introduction and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radar-derived precipitation climatology for wind turbine blade leading edge erosion

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The surge of electric current often overpasses lightning protection systems installed on wind turbines (Garolera et al 2016) and leads to burns, punctures, tip damage and edge debonding. As a result, energy companies search for mitigation techniques to alleviate downtime and economic losses (Shohag et al 2017). Lightning attachment to tall structures is a well-known engineering problem addressed in antenna and building design, but the movement of the rotor in wind turbines adds a unique aspect.…”

Section: Damages To Wind Turbinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lightning hazards to human societies in a changing climate

Yair

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Lightning is a natural hazard, lethal and destructive on short time scales and with important climatic effects on longer time-scales (through NOx production and forest fire ignition). It is accompanied by severe weather, hail and flash flooding that often entail significant economic losses. It also poses threats to aviation safety and to renewable energy production by wind-turbines, and is known to adversely affect electric power utilities and transmission lines. Present day global trends in urbanization, land-use and energy production are mapped to climate change through several scenarios, relating future concentrations of green-house gasses in the atmosphere ('Representative Concentration Pathways' or RCPs; IPCC et al 2013 Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p 1535) to the adopted energy policies and international agreements. These scenarios predict a few degrees of atmospheric warming near Earth surface, which offer significantly different climatic regimes in many regions on Earth, and also affect the intensity and frequency of atmospheric natural disasters (e.g. tropical storms). Although it is hard to precisely predict what future lightning distributions will look like, the combination of large metropolitan areas, increased population and a warmer climate almost guarantee an intensification of the human exposure to lightning hazard. We review current trends in population, urbanization and technology usage and assess their vulnerability to future lightning activity in different scenarios.

show abstract

“…More importantly, wind turbine structures, particularly the rotating blades, are susceptible to increased loads due to higher levels of turbulence [5]. In recent years, the varying turbine loading due to atmospheric turbulence has been widely regarded as an important factor that needs to be fully considered to achieve the 20-year design life criterion of wind turbines, especially utility-scale wind turbines [6]. Currently, most studies of the effect of turbulence on wind turbines focus on power fluctuations [2,4,[7][8][9], while the ones on flow-blade interaction focus on blade health monitoring based on long-term fatigue loading [10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%