Longyuan Power Fills Industry Void with Wind Turbine Blade Reverse Reconstruction Technology

Recently, the Wind Turbine Residual Life Evaluation project undertaken by Longyuan Power Engineering Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Longyuan Power”) under China Energy has made major progress, which has been successfully applied in the development of Class-1 600kV turbine blade models. The project first unveiled the wind turbine blade reverse reconstruction technology, filling the industry void in the key data extraction and molding of turbine blades.

A worker prepares for 3D scanning of a wind turbine blade

Residual life evaluation is an important method to assess the safety and reliability of wind turbines in extended service. Establishing digital models for wind power generators is a prerequisite for analysis. Blades are important components of a wind turbine to generate power, and may exert substantial impact on the accuracy of loads and residual life analysis. Given that people cannot build digitalized models of wind turbine blades simply through measuring or based on existing design experience of similar turbines, technicians of the company innovated their research methods and adopted “3D scanning and drawing of blades + measurement of cutting sections” in experiments. In this way, they obtained basic design parameters and internal structure data of turbine blades and reconstructed turbine blade models with design software, solving the problem hindering digital model analysis due to a lack of basic data. Moreover, in the process they overcame many challenges such as difficulty in capturing laser scanning lines under strong sunlight in the wilderness and locating marking points in high-humidity environment and packet losses in data transmission. It is verified that reversely constructed turbine blades are highly close to their design prototypes.

The successful reverse reconstruction of 600kV wind turbine blade models realized the verification and application of turbine blades from the dimensions of reverse modeling, design and technology, indicating that the company has possessed the capacity of reverse modeling of wind turbine blades. This method provides a new thought and solution for China Energy in digital modeling of existing outmoded wind power generators, especially the reverse modeling of turbine blades and their complicated structures.