DiscoverBlaDE

The project is going to investigate new mechanisms to control the structural failure of future offshore wind turbine blades, which scale up continuously and appear in harsh offshore environments. DiscoverBlaDE will be developing a novel full-scale experiment to discover hidden failure modes and the governing failure mechanisms, by reproducing realistic extreme dynamic loads to collapse the blade in full-scale in a laboratory with advanced testing methods, measurement techniques and data analytics.

The project is expected to be providing fundamental knowledge for developing new structural models and design methods of the future wind turbine blades, potentially reducing the large-scale risks of structural failure caused by the unknown mechanisms under extreme dynamic loads.

Expected outcome of the project:

By overcoming the compelling challenges in the project, new failure modes and failure mechanisms will be identified, based on which, new numerical models can be developed and validated. In addition, new extreme dynamic load tests may be introduced to the current blade certification process to better assess the structural integrity of the future offshore wind turbine blades – all contributing to more reliable blade structures and lower large-scale risk of blade failure in harsh offshore environments.

Read more about the project here:

Chen, X.*, & Xu, J. Z. (2016). Structural failure analysis of wind turbines impacted by super typhoon Usagi. Engineering Failure Analysis, 60, 391-404. 
Chen, X*., Li, C., & Tang, J. (2016). Structural integrity of wind turbines impacted by tropical cyclones: A case study from China. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 753.  
Chen, X.*, Li, C., & Xu, J. (2015). Failure investigation on a coastal wind farm damaged by super typhoon: A forensic engineering study. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 147, 132-142. 

The project is going to start 1 March 2023 and will run until 28 February 2025

The total project budget is 2 mio. DKK.