Further development of an Optimised Array wheel probe for Inspection of Fibre Reinforced Composites

摘要

With growing maturity in the Wind power industry has come the need to maximise the efficiency and reliability of turbine equipment. One key aspect of this is weight reduction, both to reduce manufacturing cost and to reduce loading on gearboxes, bearings and associated equipment. However to reduce the weight of the blades we must ensure that they perform as designed. Non-Destructive Testing is a key element of this. Most Turbine blade structures contain a large amount of Glass-fibre, which is a notoriously difficult material to inspect with ultrasonic techniques. Sonatest have developed a variant of their Array wheel probe, optimised for inspection of 'Difficult' composite materials and employing 'lower than normal' inspection frequencies. This paper discusses the design optimisations, and details the results obtained.