The Usefulness and Limitations of Ultrasonic Lamb Waves in Preventing the Failure of the Wind Turbine Blades

Lina Draudvilienė,Renaldas Raišutis,Paulius Griškevičius,Žaneta Stasiškienė,Asta Meškuotienė,Egidijus Žukauskas

doi:10.3390/app12041773

Abstract

The Lamb waves are named one of the promising solutions for future wind turbine blade (WTB) failure prevention. The compliance with safety assurance of WTBs by detecting structural changes during the manufacture and performing their monitoring during the service life are effective tools for environmental sustainability. This work presents the basic characteristics of Lamb waves and highlights two main unusual limitations—the dispersion and an infinite number of modes—as a great challenge that complicates the application of such waves. This requires the investigation and development of new signal processing methods (SPMs) for conducting accuracy assessments according to the requirements of ISO 17025. The general principles for the accuracy assessment of the signal processing methods applied to evaluate the dispersion of Lamb waves are presented here, and a suitable procedure for estimation of errors and uncertainties is proposed. These should facilitate the verification analysis of any signal processing method used for the dispersion evaluation of Lamb waves. This information allows determining parameters that define the measurement reliability and facilitates the application and utilisation of the proposed methods and their choice. Moreover, it is a necessary prerequisite for setting reliable testing, inspecting, and monitoring standards for WTBs certification.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilWider use of clean and renewable energy resources, which ensure near-zero greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to burning fossil fuels, is a way to ensure future sustainability worldwide
Sci. 2022, 12, 1773 of 16 generated 458 TWh of electricity and covered 16% of the electricity demand in 2020. 2Approximately 220 GW of wind power capacity are installed in Europe, but it is expected that Europe will be able to use 105 GW of the new wind power capacity installed over the yearswill addition, development of technology is changing theover gethat five
The gravity loads being reversible per each rotation cycle are significant sources of wind turbine blade (WTB) fatigue damage, while the aerodynamic loads are responsible for the generated energy

Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilWider use of clean and renewable energy resources, which ensure near-zero greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to burning fossil fuels, is a way to ensure future sustainability worldwide. The European Union (EU) has approved policies that aim to raise the total energy generation from renewables across the EU by 2030 to 27%, and many governments and corporations have pledged to use only clean energy by 2050 [1,2,3,4]. Wind energy has been identified as one of the most sustainable, mature, environmentally friendly, cheapest, and commercially developed renewable energy sources. A large number of wind farms are being installed, and their number is constantly growing [7,8,9]. The wind farms in Europe have generated 458 TWh of electricity and covered 16% of the electricity demand in 2020. 220 GW of wind power capacity are installed in Europe, but it is expected iations

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