Investigation of the wind generator blades material resistance to the lightning current action

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the problems of lightning protection of composite materials of wind generator blades. The results of experimental studies for carbon fibers under different types of lightning current pulse effects are provided. A significant increase in the degree of destruction of materials is shown for the pulse approximating field experiment results as compared with the standard lightning current pulse. We show that under the impact of the standard current pulse there is no significant material destruction, and the release of the discharge products is also insignificant. Also we shown that under the impact of the current pulse having a long «tail» time period (the current pulse close to the real one) there is an ignition of the carbon fiber composite material near the edges of the feeding electrode. With this the burning process doesn’t end after the end of the current pulse. The description of the pulse current generator created for experiments is given.