The growing demand for alternative „green“ energy places a great challenge on wind power OEMs and service providers to continually supply, maintain and service rotor blades. Exposed to harsh operational conditions, both onshore and off-shore, rotor blades are always subjected to extreme weather conditions yet they are expected by customers to sustain constant power output performance levels for longer and longer.
As such, rotor blades need to be manfactured at a very high quality standard and maintained & serviced at regular intervals ensuring that downtime is minimized. NDT inspections need to be very quick and simple, ensuring that power keeps on flowing.
The non-destructive testing (NDT) of rotor blades is critical and using Laser Shearography (LS) many defects can be detected, such as: ply wrinkling and cracked core/s, which otherwise could not be found using traditional NDT methods ie. Ultrasonics. These types of defects and also impact damage occuring during in-service operation can be inspected using LS within seconds achieving inspection rates of multiple m2/min.
