curing process for wind turbine blades Bethany K. Russell - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Development of resin and curing process for wind turbine blades

Bethany K. Russell ACCIS CDT conference 2019

16/04/2019

Supervisors: Ian Hamerton, Carwyn Ward and Shinji Takeda (Hitachi Chemical Company Ltd.)

Project outline

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Optimised resin and cure process for wind turbine blade applications. Three-pronged approach:

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CDT conference

Novel anhydride- cured epoxies characterised

Interface between resin and fibre Vascular curing-

• ptimise cure

Resins

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• Within the project 3 anhydride-cured epoxy

resin blends have been characterised

• Assessed the affect of anhydride structure
• n the resin properties
• Benchmarked against industry standard
• Properties assessed include: Tg, modulus,

thermal degradation, rheology, cure kinetics.

1 2 3

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CDT conference

Interlaminar properties

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• GFRP laminates produced
• HCCL resin showed improved ILSS (though a less toughened

response)

1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Force / N Displacement / mm

Anhydride-cured epoxy resin Industry benchmark

Resin ILSS (MPa) 1 66 Industry benchmark 55

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CDT conference

Interfacial properties

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• Microbond test procedure developed

Resin IFSS (MPa)

1 35 2 32 3 27 Industry benchmark

• 0.05

0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.5 1 1.5

Force / N Displacement (mm)

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1 2 3 4 Elastic behaviour Interfacial debonding Complete debonding Residual friction forces 1 2 3 4

Vascular curing

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• Manufacturing of thick composite parts
• Variation in cure profile -thermal gradients through thick

composite sections -> residual stresses

• Thermal gradients caused by temperature lags & spikes
• Residual stresses -> warpage, cracks and delamination
• Previous study modelled vascules1
• Improved homogeneity of cure
• Potential for multi-functionality
• 1. M. O’Donnell et al.: Cure rate tailoring of thick composites via temperature controlled vascular pathways, conference proceedings: 57th AIAA/ASCE/AHS/ASC Struct. Struct. Dyn. Mater. Conf. AIAA SciTech Forum, (AIAA

2016-0161), 2016.

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Conclusions & Future Work

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• Anhydride resins have improved ILSS and IFSS
• Vascular cure shows promising preliminary results

Future work:

• Industry is moving toward carbon fibre systems. Work is
• ngoing to assess IFSS of resin on carbon.
• Vascular curing
• Trial of vascular curing in 50 mm laminates is ongoing.
• Assess the model against the experimental results
• Optimised cure of more complex geometries

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CDT conference

Acknowledgements

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• The authors would like to acknowledge Hitachi Chemical

Company Ltd and CIMComp Hub for their continued support in the project

• Additional thanks to Dr Yusuf Madhik and Dr Matthew

O’Donnell for their help with vascular cure modelling.

• Further thanks to final year project students Hari Jones and

Sarah Azamtu who have assisted in this work.

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CDT conference

Thank you for listening

Bethany Russell beth.russell@bristol.ac.uk