Wind Turbine Blade Leading Edge Erosion
8:00 – 9:00 am MST
Sara C. Pryor
BIO Sara C Pryor is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and an affiliate Professor at the Danish Technical University. She is also a fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
ABSTRACT Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion (LEE) reduces energy production and increases wind energy operation and maintenance costs. Degradation of the blade coating and ultimately damage to the underlying blade structure are caused by collisions of falling hydrometeors with rotating blades. A range of mitigation options have been developed to slow the progression of LEE, but the selection of optimal methods to mitigate/reduce LEE are critically dependent on the prevailing meteorology that dictates the rates of coating fatigue accumulation at a given location and the time variance in the accumulation of material stresses. This presentation will discuss meteorological modeling, and measurement needs to help quantify damage probability and optimize coating lifetime extension. I will also present the first geospatially and temporally explicit assessment of coating lifetimes for the USA.