Characterisation of Voids in a Polymer Composite Wind Turbine Blade Manufactured via Resin Infusion Process

• Main Author: Ruslan, Rifdi Zulfadhli
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2011
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6952/1/2011%20-%20Characterisation%20of%20voids%20in%20a%20polymer%20composite%20wind%20turbine%20blade%20manufactured%20via%20resin.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6952/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Resin infusion is an advanced laminating technique that greatly improves the quality and strength of a material. During the resin infusion process, void may be formed due to in proper degassing process, out gassing of dissolved gas in the resin, evaporation of volatile component in the resin, shrinkage of resin and leakage in connection and mould. Void is a formation of air bubbles trapped during a composite fabrication and it has a strong impact on the mechanical properties. Therefore, void must be reduced by controlling the parameters such as resin viscosity, vacuum pressure and cure temperature. It is important to know the void content and how it has been distributed. In this project, the void analysis was done to the wind turbine blade polymer composite that manufactured using resin infusion process. The objective of the project is to characterize the void in a polymer composite wind turbine blade manufactured via resin infusion process and a mapping of void content will then be produced. The processes involved are manufacturing the blade using the strategy design of line feed type from root to tip, the specimen was cut from various important locations, separation of wood from the fiber glass and lastly the void content testing. A total of I 08 specimens have been tested using the loss on ignition method to measure the void content according to the ASTM Standard 02584-94. In this method, the specimen is burned in a furnace until only the reinforced material remains. Next, the void content calculated by referring to the ASTM Standard 02734-94. It was found that the lower side (23.71%) has lesser void content than the upper side (25.42%) and voids tend to accumulate at the outlet area (26.23%) than the inlet area (23.36%). There are also variation distributions of the void through the process for upper side and lower side due to the flow distribution. In the future, the test should be done to other strategies design such as line feed type from tip to root to find the best strategy design that can produce the lesser void content.