I-Corps: Value-Added Products from Decommissioned Composite Material Wind Turbine Blades

Award ID: 2042029

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to explore translation of mass-market architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) products produced from repurposed Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite wind turbine blades. FRP wind turbine blades are made from high quality composite materials but do not recycle into new FRP materials. As a result, obsolete blades are currently disposed in a landfill or incinerated. These disposal methods are problematic from an economic, environmental, and social perspective. Thousands of first-generation wind turbines are currently being decommissioned and the blades stockpiled for want of alternative disposal solutions. Using the proposed technology, the wind blades will be converted to electrical power transmission structures and other large-scale civil infrastructure products using proprietary software and hardware developed by the research. This I-Corps project is based on the development of algorithms and software for wind blade modeling and analysis and in methods for wind blade re-use. The algorithms create geometric and structural models of wind turbine blades automatically from point clouds built from laser scans or photographs. The algorithms also create engineering property data required for structural analysis of the re-use structures under civil engineering loading conditions, which are quite different from the aerodynamic loading for which the wind blades were originally designed. The software includes methods for the automated production of digital models of the wind blades, for visualization, product design, structural design and analysis, and fabrication and construction, all starting from the proprietary processing of digitized scans of the blades using LIDAR or photogrammetry. In addition, new methods and hardware may facilitate structural re-use applications of the wind blades in large-scale civil infrastructure applications. Further research provides the ability to predict the remaining life in the composite materials within the decommissioned wind turbine blades and safe stress limits for use in various re-use applications. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman