DTU Wind Energy’s BladeLab is a fully established laboratory at DTU Risø Campus, which provides research projects and companies with possibilities to produce larger composite structures under controlled conditions.
The BladeLab facility consists of a 160 square meter epoxy area, where composite structures of up to 15m length can be manufactured. In addition, the BladeLab, as part of DTU’s Large Scale Facility, has access to the test hall, where portal cranes can support lifting and closing operations on bigger molds. The BladeLab is equipped with modern resin mixing and injection machines to perform high quality infusion processes as well as with a glue mixing and dispensing machine to apply variable ratio meter mixing dosing systems for dispensing adhesive materials.
The highlight of DTU’s BladeLab are wind turbine blade molds of the DTU 12.6m blade equipped with integrated temperature sensors and heating/cooling systems. The blade research and demonstration platform allows to test, demonstrate and validate different theoretical ideas and practical applications in full-scale on a modern wind turbine blade at moderate costs to create a blade of the future under controlled conditions. However, individual molds can also be designed and produced in-house or in collaboration with external cooperation partners.
In addition to the BladeLab facility, DTU Wind Energy offers cooperation with a dedicated team of leading scientists and experienced technicians providing state of the art research and consultancy that cover the entire service loop of design, manufacturing, testing and monitoring of composite structures on department level.
The vision of the BladeLab and the research group dealing with the manufacturing of composite materials is not only to provide state-of-art manufacturing techniques but also to offer advanced simulation capabilities to predict best possible infusion strategies and predicting the impact of curekinetic processes.
Possible projects and activities
At DTU BladeLab, it will be possible to conduct different projects and activities. Among others, there could be projects and activities related to:
- Manufacturing of full-scale and subcomponents for experiments and/or wind tunnel tests
- Testing of new material configurations (e.g. Bamboo, specific adhesives)
- Testing and demonstration of layups variations and internal structures based on hybrid materials and/or pre-casted components/inserts
- Demonstration/testing of new manufacturing processes/automation
- Validation of resin flow simulations
- Demonstration of embedded sensors and measuring equipment
- Development of new advanced manufacturing methods
- Design, manufacturing and testing of small blades in order to make cost-effective and fast pilot tests of new concepts before scaling up to full size
Please contact us for other projects and activities needs.
Research and development support
In addition to the BladeLab facility, DTU Wind Energy offers cooperation with a dedicated team of leading scientists and experienced technicians providing state of the art research and consultancy covering experimental, numerical and analytical methods that can support the entire service loop of design, manufacturing, testing and monitoring of composite structures on department level.