TY - CONF A1 - Stamm, Michael A1 - Krankenhagen, Rainer T1 - Weather-dependent passive thermography of unheated wind turbine blades T2 - Proceedings, Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XLIV N2 - Up to now, the inspection of wind turbines with industrial climbers has been considered ”state of the art”. However, ever-larger wind turbines and advancing digitization make modern and automated inspection methods indispensable. Passive thermography can serve as such a digital and atomized method while it is well known for its applications in the inspection of buildings or electrical circuits. However, its application relies on thermal gradients in the inspected object such that a temperature contrast exists between damaged and sound areas. This also holds for unheated structures like rotor blades of wind turbines which show no intrinsic temperature gradient and can hardly be heated. Under certain weather conditions with sufficient solar loading and diurnal temperature variations, passive thermography is suitable for the in-service inspection of rotor blades. However, for a reliable use of passive thermography on ”thermal passive” components, the incorporation of these environmental conditions in the planning and evaluation of thermal inspections is crucial. Additionally, the complex inner structure of wind turbine blades in comparison to other objects and buildings require a specific method referencing the individual rotor blades to each other. This allows the distinction between the thermal response of design-specific structural features and damages or irregularities between the three blades. We show thermal signatures of damage in rotor blades and contrast them with structural characteristics by comparing the three blades. In addition to measurements in industrial environments, laboratory measurements are shown and compared to simulations. The long-term goal is to simulate the influence of different weather parameters and thus gain a better understanding of measurements in the field. The results shown here can be seen as one step towards industrial application. T2 - SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing CY - Orlando, Florida, USA DA - 03.04.2022 KW - Passive thermography KW - Wind energy KW - FEM simulations PY - 2022 DO - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2618740 VL - 12109 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) AN - OPUS4-54943 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -