Tribo-Erosion Performance of GFRP Composite Panels in Both Offshore and Onshore Environmental Conditions

Abstract

The erosion wear due to raindrop plays a vital role in the service life of wind turbine components especially blades. Furthermore, the rain impact angle and the environmental conditions having a major impact on erosion wear. In the present work, the rain erosion performance of glass fiber reinforced polyester (GFRP) blade material in offshore and onshore environmental conditions has been studied. A whirling arm test rig was created and used to conduct the erosion tests on both offshore and onshore conditions. To simulate the offshore and onshore environmental conditions, experiments were carried out using both fresh and saltwater. The trail runs were carried out for time duration (30 – 90 min) at different impact angles (0° - 90°) by running the whirling arm tester at different impact velocities (30-70 m/s). During the experimentation, the impact velocity was varied from 30 – 70 m/s. The impact angle was taken as 0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 90° respectively. The results showed that erosion wear in the offshore conditions was more in all the cases as compared to onshore conditions. Furthermore, the maximum mass loss was at 45° impact angles for both conditions, which was further endorsed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis. Very little work has been reported on optimization of erosion wear response of Offshore and Onshore wind turbines by using different design of experiment techniques. The erosion testing reveals that the GFRP blades exhibit a ductile erosion mechanism which was further explained by using three-dimensional surface plots with the help of Image J software.

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“…Several new research by Singh et al (2023aSingh et al ( , 2023bSingh et al ( , 2022) introduce coating additives such as Ni-based composite and WC-10Co4Cr to protect against erosion wear and improve the performance of composite panels in both offshore and onshore environmental conditions. The tribo-wear caused by the erosion could be prevented by thermally spraying solid coating on the equipment in harsh environment that is very similar extreme boundary conditions.…”