Self-sensing wind turbine composite blades for structural health monitoring (SMARTBLADE)

风能是替代化石燃料的主要可再生能源之一，以应对世界面临的环境和气候危机挑战。中国和英国共同贡献了全球约500吉瓦风力发电容量的40%。然而，不断增加的运行和维护（O&M）成本已成为风能可持续发展的关键制约因素--预计到2020年，全球成本将达到每年170亿美元。该项目的主要目标是开发一种集成智能复合材料，用于风力涡轮机叶片。智能复合材料将能够对叶片进行自主结构健康监测，以检测损坏的早期迹象，并实现维护计划的可预测性，防止叶片结冰，以确保运营效率，同时，自我-该复合材料将与各种类型的长纤维压电复合材料换能器集成，用作振动传感器和能量采集器、微型固态电池和印刷电子产品。这将在风力涡轮机叶片的设计、制造和操作中开辟新的技术可能性，以改善其操作。

Wind energy is one of the leading renewable sources to replace fossil fuel in order to tackle the environmental and climate crisis challenges that the world is facing. China and the UK together contribute to ~40% of the world's ~500 GW wind power capacity. However, the ever-increasing operation and maintenance (O&M) cost has become a critical constraint for the sustainability of wind energy growth - global cost estimated to reach US$17bn pa by 2020.The primary objective of this project is to develop an integrated smart composite to be incorporated into the wind turbine blades. The smart composite will be able to perform autonomous structural health monitoring of the blades, to detect the early signs of damage and enable predictability in maintenance scheduling and prevent the icing of the blades, to ensure operational efficiency, whilst also self-sustaining the power supply of these functionalities without need for battery replacement.The composite will be integrated with various types of macro fibre piezoelectric composite transducers used as vibration sensors and energy harvesters, micro-fabricated solid-state batteries and printed electronics. This will open up new technological possibilities in the design, manufacturing and operation of wind turbine blades to improve their operation.