QUALIBLADE

Fast, quality assured and permanent repair of composite wind turbine blades without the need to dismantle the blades

The QUALIBLADE project offers a solution for all blade repairs, in wind turbines, to be carried out without the blades being dismantled, thus eliminating all transport costs and the associated downtime. This solution is provided through a complete in situ system for damage identification and location, repair and repair quality assurance that can be rapidly operated by just two human operators in a weather protected cabin, eliminating dangerous rope access.

The repair involves the following steps:

(1) The protected cabin is moved from the base of a turbine tower to the suspected damage location by a TURBINE TOWER CLIMBING RING ROBOT developed in a previous EU project (acronym :ConcEPT).

(2) The nature and boundaries of the damaged region are traced out exactly in depth and cross section using existing ultrasonic and thermographic imaging instrumentation adapted to the environment.

3) Repair Surface Preparation: A fully automated portable laser programmed with the coordinates of the damage volume will cut out and mill the damaged volume of material.