Uncovering the Fatigue Degradation Mechanisms in Composite Materials Used in Wind Turbine Blades - DTU Orbit: Being able to observe and understand fatigue damage in the load carrying laminates of wind turbine blade plays an important role designing longer and lighter turbine blades and thereby making it possible to increase the size of wind turbines or to upgrade existing turbines for lower wind classes’. Thereby it will be possible to lower the cost of energy for wind energy based electricity.
In the presented study, the governing fatigue failure mechanism is uncovered in a typical non-crimp quasi-unidirectional glass fiber fabric reinforced polymer matrix composites used in conventional wind turbine blades. The study utilize two non-destructive experimental techniques (in-situ trans-illuminated white light imagining and ex-situ 3D x-ray tomography) used to uncover the interaction between the fatigue damage initiation in the backing bundles and the fatigue failure in the load carrying fibers.....
