A New Concept of Sustainable Wind Turbine Blades: Bio-Inspired Design with Engineered Adhesives

Leon Mishnaevsky Jr; Mohsen Jafarpour; Johanna Krüger; Stanislav N Gorb

doi:10.3390/biomimetics8060448

A New Concept of Sustainable Wind Turbine Blades: Bio-Inspired Design with Engineered Adhesives

Biomimetics (Basel). 2023 Sep 22;8(6):448. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics8060448.

Authors

Leon Mishnaevsky Jr¹, Mohsen Jafarpour², Johanna Krüger², Stanislav N Gorb²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
² Zoological Institute, Kiel University, 24118 Kiel, Germany.

Abstract

In this paper, a new concept of extra-durable and sustainable wind turbine blades is presented. The two critical materials science challenges of the development of wind energy now are the necessity to prevent the degradation of wind turbine blades for several decades, and, on the other side, to provide a solution for the recyclability and sustainability of blades. In preliminary studies by DTU Wind, it was demonstrated that practically all typical wind turbine blade degradation mechanisms (e.g., coating detachment, buckling, spar cap/shell adhesive joint degradation, trailing edge failure, etc.) have their roots in interface degradation. The concept presented in this work includes the development of bio-inspired dual-mechanism-based interface adhesives (combining mechanical interlocking of fibers and chemical adhesion), which ensures, on the one side, extra-strong attachment during the operation time, and on the other side, possible adhesive joint separation for re-use of the blade parts. The general approach and physical mechanisms of adhesive strengthening and separation are described.

Keywords: lifetime; sustainability; wind energy; wind turbine blade.

Grants and funding

L.M.J. acknowledges the financial support of the Innovation Foundation of Denmark in the framework of project “WiseWind: New generation of sustainable wind turbine blades”, No. 2079-00004B, of the European Commission via Horizon project “Blades2Build: Recycle, repurpose and reuse end-of-life wind blades composites: A coupled pre- and co- processing demonstration plant”, grant agreement101096437, and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark via Danida grant 19-M02-DTU “Maintenance and repair strategy for wind energy development”. M.J. acknowledges the financial support provided by the “German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)” (ID: 57684920).