Towards automation of wind energy rotor blade production: a review of challenges and application examples

Abstract

Current wind turbine rotor blades have a significant impact on the cost of the turbine, which is mainly a consequence of the manual process steps involved in blade production. The manual, labour-intensive production process leads to high tolerances and requires high safety and reliability factors. Especially in the case of offshore turbines with current and upcoming blade dimensions, automation will make the blades cost effective, quicker to produce and guarantees a higher quality. Here, we analyse the current blade structure and production processes and present a technical review of the existing automation approaches for the textile build-up process in industry and academia. Thereby we classify these approaches according to the different techniques based on the rotor blade structure parts.