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Robotic Deployment of Stabilized Shearography Unit for Wind Turbine Blade Inspection

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Robotics in Natural Settings (CLAWAR 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 530))

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Abstract

A wind turbine blade inspection system called Winspector has been developed by a European consortium to automate the in-situ non-destructive testing of wind blades. A robot platform is winched up a wind turbine tower to reach a blade locked into a 90° pitch angle. The blade region to be inspected is reached by a combination of an extension ladder and a 5-axis robot arm to place an end-effector onto the blade surface. The end-effector is critical to the success of the shearography technique used to detect subsurface defects when the blade is experiencing inevitable out-of-plane, in-plane, and root-to-tip vibrations. The paper describes the development of the end-effector which carries the shearography unit and ensures (with passive compliance and design based on analysis of aerodynamic blade shapes) that the unit remains at a constant distance from blade surface in the presence of blade vibrations. The system has been tested with three separate field trials in a wind farm near Athens in Greece. Sub-surface defect detection with shearography has been successfully demonstrated.

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Acknowledgements

The Winspector project was funded by the European H2020 FTI program, 1/09/2015, Reference: 700986, with lead partner WRS Marine (Netherlands), and partners IKnowHow (formerly Innora) (Greece), TWI Ltd (UK), London South Bank University (UK), Simens Gamesa (Spain).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London South Bank University, London, SE1 0AA, UK

    Vitor Marques & Tariq Pervez Sattar

Authors
  1. Vitor Marques
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  2. Tariq Pervez Sattar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tariq Pervez Sattar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

    José M. Cascalho

  2. School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, UK

    Mohammad Osman Tokhi

  3. School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Manuel F. Silva

  4. Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

    Armando Mendes

  5. Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering (M3), Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Khaled Goher

  6. Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

    Matthias Funk

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Marques, V., Sattar, T.P. (2023). Robotic Deployment of Stabilized Shearography Unit for Wind Turbine Blade Inspection. In: Cascalho, J.M., Tokhi, M.O., Silva, M.F., Mendes, A., Goher, K., Funk, M. (eds) Robotics in Natural Settings. CLAWAR 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 530. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15226-9_35

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