Wind Turbine Spar Cap Locating Features for Shear Web Bonding
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing methods for manufacturing large-scale composite structures, such as wind turbine blades, face challenges in ensuring proper placement and bonding of shear webs during the mold closure process, often resulting in sub-optimal bonding positions and increased weight due to the use of permanent fixtures.
Innovation Solution
The proposed solution involves a spar cap with integrated locating features and a bond gap feature, which guides the shear web into precise position and ensures adequate adhesive application, eliminating the need for external fixtures and simplifying the assembly process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If permanent fixtures are used to guide shear webs during mold closure, then positioning precision is improved, but device complexity and weight increase
Solution Approach 1:
The locating features are integrated directly into the spar cap structure itself, merging the positioning function with the structural component. This eliminates the need for separate permanent fixtures while maintaining positioning precision during mold closure.
Solution Approach 2:
The positioning function is extracted from external permanent fixtures and incorporated into the spar cap design. This removes the complexity and weight of separate fixtures while preserving the guiding capability for shear webs.
2Manufacturing precision
If permanent fixtures are used to guide shear webs during mold closure, then positioning precision is improved, but weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The locating features are merged with the spar cap structure, eliminating the need for additional permanent fixtures. This reduces the overall blade weight while maintaining the positioning precision required for shear web placement during mold closure.
3Productivity
If adhesive is applied without guidance features, then application speed is improved, but bonding precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The bond gap feature acts as an intermediary element that guides adhesive flow between the spar cap and shear web. This ensures precise adhesive placement and adequate bonding without requiring complex application control systems, maintaining both speed and precision.
4Ease of operation
If shear webs are allowed to move during mold closure, then ease of assembly is improved, but bonding precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The locating features on the spar cap enable the shear webs to self-align and self-position during assembly. The shear webs automatically engage with the locating features, ensuring precise positioning without requiring external fixtures or complex alignment procedures, thus maintaining both ease of assembly and bonding precision.
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B
Figure 1C
AI summary
Provided herein is a spar cap having a profile for guiding and receiving a shear web for wind turbine blade. Particularly, the present disclosure provides a pultruded spar cap having a bond gap feature to maintain a uniform space for distribution of bonding paste between the spar cap and shear web. Also, the spar cap is formed with locating features which guide and receive placement of the shear web.