Carbon Fiber Repair
Wind blade repair: Planning, safety, flexibility
Scott Stephenson is CompositesWorld’s conference director. He has been involved with carbon fiber composites since 1983 when he started working for Fiber Materials Inc. (Biddeford, Maine), a leading manufacturer of carbon/carbon composites. Since 1997, Stephenson has organized conferences and published studies to provide industry executives with strategic information about and analyses of the advanced materials and technologies that drive innovative product development.
Somewhat lost in the buildup of the wind energy industry during the past few years is an important challenge that is getting more attention among wind farm managers and the composites industry: wind blade maintenance and repair. These structures are exposed constantly to mechanical and heat load cycles. Each is struck by lightning at least once in its lifetime, must withstand the force of wind and all the debris it brings with it and, thus, must be regularly maintained to remain functional.
Tackling maintenance and repair issues and their increasing complexity were two speakers at CompositesWorld’s 2011 Wind and Ocean Energy Seminar, held in April in Portland, Maine. Malcolm Rosenow, a global new business development consultant based in Aiken, S.C., discussed repair challenges in the wake of blade warranty expirations. Juan Borges, a composites engineer at WindCom (Houston, Texas), presented a case history of offshore wind blade repair strategies.
Most notable about Rosenow’s presentation was the fact that most rotor blades carry post-installation warranties for one to two years. For structures with an expected service life of 15 to 20 years, this leaves much of the blade’s maintenance outside the warranty window. By the end of 2011, the warranties will expire on 25,000 turbines (75,000 blades). The warranties on another 28,000 turbines (84,000 blades) will expire by the end of 2012. In fact, as a result of the 2007-2009 wind energy boom, there are now more turbines with expiring warranties than are being installed. This is putting immense pressure on wind farm managers as they try to optimize turbine uptime.
Complicating matters, Rosenow notes, is the proprietary nature of resin, fiber and manufacturing systems used in wind blade manufacturing — varying ply patterns and core types, epoxy vs. vinyl ester, infusion vs. prepreg, etc. For repair specialists, who most often don’t have access to the original (legacy) material, the challenge is to find composite products (resins, fabrics, adhesives) that are equivalent to the legacy material in the blade. Further, the blade repair community is, for the most part, unregulated, which results in a variety of repair capabilities among specialists.
Carbon Fiber Repair - News
He has been involved with carbon fiber composites since 1983 when he started working for Fiber Materials Inc. (Biddeford, Maine), a leading manufacturer of carbon/carbon composites. Since 1997, Stephenson has organized conferences and published studies
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Factory Tour: Ruckus Components – Carbon Fiber Repair and so much ...
What do you get when you mix a wacky engineer who specialized in composites with a guy who used to work in hospitalities but just happens to lay down killer paint work? You get Ruckus Components ! I recently had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with Shawn (left) and Graham (right) in their Ruckus Components lab. They have created a shop environment that is a somewhat of a mixed bag. You will find a bit of mad science, wacky engineering, and custom fabrication / paint, along with carbon fiber repair work.
The boys at Ruckus primarily focus on carbon fiber repair. Most will find that the cost of repair is a lot less than a crash replacement frame. So, if you happen to leave the bike on the roof of your car while entering your garage you can take it over to Ruckus and see what they can do for you. They will inspect any carbon parts (frames, forks, wheels) and let you know if the repair is possible and the general cost ahead of time. Typical turn around time is about two weeks.
For the rest of the images, including a customized Enve Road 1.0 fork, click through.
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