TRI Wind Turbine Blade Interior Inspection Robot

BESCHREIBUNG

The inside of a wind turbine blade is a tapering composite cavity that no one can crawl very far into, and the defects that matter there — voids and cracks in the adhesive bonding the spar caps to the shell, cracks in the reinforcing adhesive inside the shear web, and whitening, wrinkles and cracks in the inner skin and main spar cap — are invisible from outside. TRI's robot drives in along the blade cavity or the shear web and reaches more than 85 per cent of the blade's length. Six-wheel drive on two imported motors, soft rubber tyres and a deliberately placed centre of gravity let it climb blade surfaces inclined up to 30 degrees; where the curvature inside the blade forces an extreme climbing angle, the wheels can rest against the spar and it drives on one side alone. It goes forward and back, turns on the spot, reverses direction and steers while moving, and ships with two sets of wheels — six small ones for tight sections, a mix of small and large where there is height to spare. Cameras are built into the front and rear of the body: 2-megapixel HD with 10x optical zoom, live video and stills. The measurement trick is a pair of laser pointers whose fixed separation gives the software a scale, so the size and area of a defect in the image can be measured rather than estimated. The camera gimbal rotates 360 degrees axially and 220 degrees radially, there is an auxiliary defogging function for the lens, and high-brightness LEDs let it work in total darkness. When the robot can go no further, zooming in extends the effective inspection length. The system is completed by a controller, a cable reel and smartphone or tablet control, with counting correction and inspection report generation.

FUNKTIONEN