A Novel Mechanical Stress Measurement Method Applied to Wind Turbine Rotor Blades

A.H. Hegab[1], J.P. Kaerst[1]
[1]HAWK, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Goettingen, Germany
Veröffentlicht in 2013

Rotor blades for wind turbines are made of GFRP material. They have to be designed to withstand wind and weather over their approximately 20 years of lifetime. The ability to monitor the mechanical stress is crucial in order to reduce maintenance costs and to maximize operational availability.

This paper presents the combination of SPICE® and COMSOL Multiphysics®, in order to reduce computation time. This allows to focus on design details with COMSOL Multiphysics® while modelling the overall design using SPICE®. The proposed measurement method based on TEM-Waveguides is outlined. According to simulation and experiments it is now possible to permanently monitor the strain of rotor blades. Therefore only a few modifications on conventional rotor blades are necessary.