Wind Turbine Blade Inspection

By Robots
Robotics - 311.022
Marin Galic

Matrikelnummer: -
Studienkennzahl: ERASMUS

Fakultet elektrotehnike i raunarstva,
Sveuilite u Zagrebu (Faculty of Electrical
Engineering and Computing, University of
Zagreb)

Technische Universitt Wien, sterreich
(Vienna University of Technology, Austria)

e-mail: -



Marin Galic was born on 27. October 1990 in Vir (Bosnia
and Herzegovina). First he went to elementary school in Vir, a
small village in the west Herzegovina. With age of 15 he
decided to visit high school Gimnazija Fra Grge Martica in
Posuje. In next four years he was active in few high schools
project such as charities and Grga magazine section. After he
finished his high school in 2009, he went to Zagreb (Croatia)
to study electrical engineering on Faculty of Electrical
Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb.
Curriculum Vitae
After three years of studying, he became a Bachelor of
Science in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.
From the beginning of his study he was interesting in
Renewable Energy Sources, especially in Wind Energy.
During this time he worked on Seminars
Vjetroelektrane (eng. Windmills) with professor Kreimir
Trontl and Iskoritavanje energije vjetra Urban Wind with
professor Slavko Krajcar.
He wrote his bachelor thesis Stanje razvoja tehnologije
vjetrenih elektrana (eng. State of the Art of Windmills
Technologies), also with his mentor, professor Slavko
Krajcar.
In 2012 he continued with his study on master program
concentrating his self on Windmills and other Renewable
Energy Sources. In the autumn 2013 he went to Teschnische
Universitt Wien (Austria) to make new experiences and
knowledges.
During his stay in Vienna, he worked on a project (Master
Seminar) Plan razvoja energetskog sektora u Republici
Hrvatskoj with a team of other students from Zagreb, trying
to give new ideas of energy production and electrical
supplying in Croatia.
After the winter semester of academic year 2013/2014
spended in Vienna, he want to come back to Zagreb and do the
Master thesis which should be his finall work on the Faculty of
Electrical Engineering and Computing.
His favourite hobbies are learning new languages, hanging out
with friends, watching movies, playing football and basketball,
bike driving, playing video games, fishing, etc.
Introduction

The goal of this presentation is to present
a ussage of robots in wind power plant such as
Wind Turbine Blade Inspection By Robots.

Characteristics of wind turbines
If someone mention us a windmill (wind turbine), we will
probably think about the wind power plant with high tower and
long, mostly three, blades spinning over the rotor, just like its
shown in Picture 1.
If we look inside the nacelle, we will notice couple of major
parts that are responsible for electricity production (Picture 2).
Characteristics of wind turbines
Picture 1. Wind turbine
Picture 2. Wind turbine from inside [http://inhabitat.com/ge-next-gen-offshore-wind-turbine-is-25-more-
efficient/]

Wind turbines require high investment costs, and one of the
most expensive parts of windmills are blades.
Blades are specially designed to increase the efficiency of
wind turbines to make them competitive with fossil fuels.
To increase the power of wind turbine, blades must grow in
length, but they also have to be as light as possible.
Lighter weight means better performance, longer life, lower
manufacturing costs, and shortened manufacturing cycles, all
factors that enhance competitiveness in energy markets [5].
Picture 3. Typical structure of wind turbine blade
It is important to inspect and maintaine windturbine blades to
keep them away from damaging, but also to keep safe other
parts of windmills that depense on blades (blades make stress
on mechanical and gear components).
To avoide all costs that can be cause damaging of windturbine
blades it is necessary to take care about them.
Blades are getting much larger, thus possibilities of damaging
them is also higher because of the higher tip speeds.

Picture 4. rotor diameters of wind turbines
[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-
choices/renewable-energy/how-wind-energy-
works.html]
RIWEA (Robot for the Inspection of Wind Turbine Rotor
Blades) project
The goal of the RIWEA project is to develop new technologies for
wind turbine blades inspections.
Engineers want to be able to make thermography, ultrasonics and
high resolution pictures inspections.
Robots are enclosing to a rotor blades what enables the detail inspect
of the blade.
The systems developed in the project may also be utilized for other
fields of application.
RIWEA robot can inspect bonded spar joints, leading edges,
and trailing edges by using non-destructive inspection system.

RIWEA robot can be utilized in blade cleaning because the
robot can be fastened to the surface of the blade, regardless of
the figure, and can move the blades using wire [6].

Inspection of the windmill blades
Technical inspection of windmill blades is not just a dangerous
job for blades but it also takes a lot of time.
The first method of this kind of control insisted stoping the
rotation of blades and taking pictures of them from about 100
meters away.
This process of blade inspection takes about four hours
Engineers came to an idea to use robots (climbing
maschines) to make this process much more easier
Key elements of development [2]
1. Inspection system that inspects rotor blades from outside
2. Nondestructive inspection system such as active infrared
thermography and ultrasound for deeper structures such as the
bonded joints of the spar and leading and trailing edges
3. Visual surface inspection with high resolution cameras
4. Automated carrier systems that position and guide inspection
sensor systems along the rotor blade surfaces
5. Optimized power supply and safety systems for use at rotor
blades
6. Complete rotor blade condition log with precise mapping of
detected damage, specifying its particular position and extent
in a coordinate system matching the blade contour

Key elements of development [2]
International Climbing Maschines
International Climbing Maschines is a company that produces
small robots designed to climb on different surfaces.
These devices are portable and operated safely from the
ground so humans are not exposed to dangers
These small maschines are capable to climb on different
surfaces such as tanks, ships, building structures, wind turbine
towers, dams, etc.
The idea is that these robots climb on the wind turbine near
blades and make high-resolution pictures of them.
They are using powerful magnets to cling tenaciously to the
metal surfaces as it spins around.
These pictures are being sent to engineers who are reviewing
them searching for a possible damages.

Picture 5. Climbing robot
The procedure of taking pictures of wind turbine blades takes
only few minutes.
ICM rated these robots to pull up nearly 225 pounds, what is
enough to carry all necessary equipment.
These robots are designed to work in different weather
conditions such as rain and high winds.
They are capable to climb about 300 feet vertically.






Additional possibility of these robots is usage of microwave
scanning to peer inside of the blade and search for the
damages before they come outside and cause problems.

Short video about climbing robot of I nternational Climbing Maschines company
To scan a blade from inside, engineers took high frequency to
increase the range and they were working on increasing its
speed too.
HR-MP20 robot from Helical Robotics can carry up to 20
pounds of sensors, cameras, and other inspection gear, using
five powerful neodymium magnets to stick like a limpet to
steel towers and turbine blades that are at least seven feet in
diameter.

The robot is controlled wirelessly from the ground, and with a
top speed of over 43 feet per minute, it can get to the end of
even the longest turbine blades in just a few minutes. What's
really impressive is that even out at the blade tip, the magnets
are powerful enough to keep the 42-pound robot from being
launched skyward [3].
As the producers say, the price of this robot is about 20 000 $.
General Electric climbing robots
General Electric (GE) is also one of the companies that
designe climbing robots that can be used for wind turbine
blades inspection.

They are controled remotely and have a wireless camera.

General Electric climbing robots
Picture 6. Climbing robot of General Electric company
The robots utilize a vacuum pump that removes the air
between the machine and the turbine, creating a vacuum seal
that keeps it solidly attached as it climbs [8].
Short video below shows the GE robot climbing on vertically
surface as also its control system.

Short video about climbing robot of General Electric company
Technical datas of GE climbing robot [4]
Maintenance robot for wind power blade cleaning
Robots havent find their use
only in blades inspections,
but also in cleaning of wind
turbine blades.
To keep efficiency of the
wind turbines at the level, it
is important to clean blades.

Picture 7. I mpurities on wind turbine
Dirton wind power blades includes flying plankton,
mosquitoes, oil, ice, dust, marine salt etc.
Picture xx shows a bug on the blade (Magallon26 wind power
farm, May 2005.).
This single bug caused partial loss of theoretical power
production (Picture xy.)
Maintenance robot for wind power blade cleaning
Picture 8. Loss of power production caused by bug
Maintenance robot for wind power blade cleaning
Old ways of cleaning
Before new way of cleaning was discovered, people were
cleaning wind turbine blades by them slef as its shown in
pictures below. They were using water jet, ropes or ramps.

Picture 9a. Old ways of cleaning
wind turbine blades
Old ways of cleaning
Picture 9b. Old ways of cleaning wind turbine blades
Blade cleaning robot
Blade cleaning robot is composed of side brush frame, leading
edge brush frame, camera, water tank, water jet, wire rope
holder, roller shock absorber, and brush (Picture 10.).
The robot shown on a picture 10 has three brushes and two
cameras.
It also has a tank with water (up to 350 l) and four water jets in
one brush module.


Blade cleaning robot
Picture 10. Blade cleaning robot
Robot goes up by dropping 4 ropes from nacelle down the power
generator.
It sprays water overral using water jet and brushes cleans the surface
of the blades.
After cleaning, robot checks the surface of blades to see is there any
dirt left.
This robot can move up to 0,1 m/s.
The whole procedure takes 64 minutes per blade.
This way of cleaning takes also 3 hours less than manual cleaning.
Picture 11. Blade cleaning robot on the mission
Part concept design
Roller Shock Absorber offsets the vibration caused by
vertically movements of robot.
Brush-Water J et Module - three brush-water jet module, two
brushes and four water jet nozzle at every brush-water jet
module. Pressure of the water jet is up to 145 bar.
Frame Moving of Brush - robot can cover the whole surface
of the blade because the robot moves vertically and brush-
water jet module moves horizontally.
Part concept design
Camera three cameras that show the condition of the blade
surface.
Rope Holder ensures the vertically movement of the robot.
Robot and whole equipment weight almost 1.5t.
Controller
This type of robot require 19 motors:
6 brush rotating motors
3 vertical movement motors
3 water-jet turning
Angle regulating motor and
4 hoist motion motors.
Controller
Picture 12. Control diagram
Controller
Except the motors, this type of robot uses also 11 sensors.
Most important sensors are razor sensor that measures the
distance between brush and the blade surface and distance
measuring sensor that measures the distance between brush-
water jet module and pillar frame.
Control of the integration motor is done by 1 PLC controller
and uses 3 microcontrollers.
PLC controller synchronizes 3 microcontrollers, and control
hoist of the nacelle to control vertical movement
Conclusion
To keep wind turbine blades away of damaging, it is important
to inspect them and take care of them.
To make this inspecting procedure simple, engineers are using
robots.
Robots are climbing on the wind turbine a take pictures of
blades.
These pictures are being send to engineers who analyses them
and look for possible damages.
Conclusion
Robots can also inspect blades from inside using high-
frequency microwave radiation.
Except blade inspection, robots can also been used to clean
blades so losess in electricity production could be avoided.
Robots are presenting simple, cheap and safe way of
inspection, cleaning and maintaining wind turbines.
Literature
[1] http://composite.about.com/od/applications/a/Evolution-
Of-Wind-Turbine-Blades.htm
[2] http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/business-units/robotic-
systems/riwea.html
[3] http://www.dvice.com/2013-4-25/inspection-robot-
shimmies-out-spinning-wind-turbine-blades
[4] http://www.gizmag.com/helical-robotics-wind-turbine-
inspection-robots/26921/

Literature
[5] http://www.windpowerengineering.com/design/mechanica
l/blades/building-a-better-turbine-blade/
[6] http://www.iaarc.org/publications/fulltext
/Maintenance_robot_for_wind_power_blade_cleaning.pdf
[7] http://www.visatec.net/EN/01_Produkte/ROV/P
roduktblaetter/VT-610-ICMCL.php
[8] http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/13/3083141/ge-wind-
turbine-robot
Literature
[10] http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/business-units/robotic-
systems/riwea.html
[11] http://thinkgreendegrees.com/wind-turbine-blade-
inspection-by-robots-interviews-video-demo
[12] http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-wind-
power/wind-turbine-generator-technologies