TY - CONF A1 - Trappe, Volker A1 - Nielow, Dustin T1 - Fatigue loading of sandwich shell test specimens with simulated production imperfections and in-situ NDT N2 - A shell test bench was developed at BAM 5.3 which allows for static and fatigue testing of curved fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) structures, during which in-situ the damage state can be non-destructively inspected by thermography and strain-field measurement techniques. Sandwich shell specimens with typical wind turbine blade manufacturing defects were designed and tested. The tested imperfections show a fairly significant reduction (up to 90%) of the shell test specimens‘ lifetime, depending on the type of imperfection. Using the in-situ NDT methods incorporated in the shell test bench, the location and cycle time of the initial defects and the damage evolution was investigated. T2 - 7. International Conference on Fatigue of Composites CY - Vicenza, Italy DA - 04.07.2018 KW - Fatigue of sandwich shell structures KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Wind turbine blades PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-50126 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Trappe, Volker A1 - Nielow, Dustin T1 - Fatigue loading of sandwich shell test specimens with simulated production imperfections and in-situ NDT N2 - A shell test bench was developed at BAM 5.3 which allows for static and fatigue testing of curved fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) structures, during which in-situ the damage state can be non-destructively inspected by thermography and strain-field measurement techniques. Sandwich shell specimens with typical wind turbine blade manufacturing defects were designed and tested. The tested imperfections show a fairly significant reduction (up to 90%) of the shell test specimens‘ lifetime, depending on the type of imperfection. Using the in-situ NDT methods incorporated in the shell test bench, the location and cycle time of the initial defects and the damage evolution was investigated. T2 - 7. International Conference on Fatigue of Composites CY - Vicenza, Italy DA - 04.06.2018 KW - Fatigue of sandwich shell structures KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Wind turbine blades PY - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-501275 SP - 1 EP - 7 AN - OPUS4-50127 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Trappe, Volker T1 - Polymer matrix composites investigated with NDT at BAM N2 - Statistically the mean time between damage events on rotor blades is 6 years (Deutscher Windenergie Report 2006). Due to imperfection in the production the shell structures get cracks after a few years fare before the designed life time. A shell test rig was built at BAM for efficient research on the effects of defects in production. In-situ and ex-situ NDT give a better understanding from degradation processes in composite materials. With advanced methods in the research on the fatigue behaviour of FRP it was found a load level of infinite life for GFRP and CFRP. This is in the range of typical strain values of airliners and rotor blades in normal operation. Due to the fibre-composite nature NDT techniques have to be suitable to a wide length scale to image micro cracking as well as bigger defects. Therefore different techniques have to be applied and developed. T2 - Colloquium Abendi CY - São Paulo, Brazil DA - 05.11.2019 KW - Polymer matrix composites KW - Non-destructive testing PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-50130 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Trappe, Volker A1 - Ghafafian, Carineh T1 - Scarf-joint repairs under fatigue loading investigated for sandwich shell applications N2 - Wind turbine rotor blades are produced as aerodynamic, three-dimensionally formed sandwich shell structures using mainly glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP). The GFRP used today have the potential to withstand the harsh operating conditions of rotor blades over the projected service life of 20 years. Premature damages that occur can be traced primarily back to design and/or manufacturing imperfections, as well as unusually high load scenarios (for instance lightning strikes, or strong winds combined with system control errors). Therefore, rotor blades have to be repaired several times (on average 2-3 times) during their projected service life. Approximately 70% of these are repairs of small- to medium-sized sandwich shells, carried out by technicians directly accessing the blade by suspended roping at the wind turbine location. The goal is to execute repairs that will last over the remaining service life, i.e. be sustainable. Within the framework of a research project carried out at BAM, Division 5.3 Polymer Matrix Composites, Department 5 for Materials Engineering, not only was the geometric shape (round vs. square in relation to the top view) varied, but also the layup of the scarf repair structure, variables that have not been studied systematically to-date. Sub-component scale sandwich shell specimens with representative repairs were used in this work in addition to coupon-scale specimens that are more commonly seen in literature. These sub-component shell specimens were tested using a unique shell test bench under loading conditions representative of wind turbine blade shell operating conditions with respect to fatigue strength. Using non-destructive testing methods (field strain measurement and thermography), damage development and distribution was monitored and analyzed in-situ. As a result, a concept was developed in which the repaired areas showed at least equivalent if not higher fatigue strength than the reference shells that were not repaired. T2 - ICFC9 - The 9th International Conference on the Fatigue of Composites CY - Vicenza, Italy DA - 21.06.2023 KW - Repair of sandwich shell structures KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Wind turbine blades PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57929 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -