Climbing Robot to Perform Radiography of Wind Blades

Abstract

The RADBLAD project aims to demonstrate a step change in the accurate and fast in-situ non-destructive testing of wind turbine blades located off-shore using remote robotic deployment of X-ray radiography at great heights to image the full thickness of a blade. This paper describes the development of the robot system that deploys an X-ray source and detector around a blade by climbing up a turbine tower. Robot design is concentrated on developing a lightweight modular robot system easily transported to test sites and assembled quickly but capable of carrying a large payload. Four tower climbing crawlers drive a ring structure (constructed around the tower) up a wind turbine tower to place an X-ray source and digital detector on either side of a blade with long arms constituted by a bridge structure. The system is actuated by fourteen electric motors, six pneumatic actuators on the ring structure and sixteen pneumatic actuators on the crawlers. The focus of the paper is on describing the remote control of these actuators via a CANopen bus and a DC power bus that aims to minimize the size of umbilical power and communication cables.