Manufacture and Design of Large Offshore Wind Turbine Blades (MADEBLADES)

The MADEBLADES project targets further development and prototype demonstration of a disruptive design and manufacturing solution for large (>90m) offshore wind turbine blades.


Overall project objective and success criterion is to enable a 30% reduction in the cost of produced blades.


The MADEBLADES project will demonstrate paradigm-shifting concepts for design, material usage and manufacturing processes for industrial blade production with a higher degree of automation. A Danish based logistics chain will be developed to handle pre-fabricated components and transfer blade material to the blade mould with a minimum of manual handling.


The expected outcome of MADEBLADES is an improved competitiveness due to a higher throughput by a reduction of moulding cycle time, person-hours required per produced blade and a material cost reduction. Expected impact is therefore a better competitiveness by reduction of cost for offshore wind turbine blades and thereby reduced levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for offshore wind energy.


Furthermore, MADEBLADES will improve the scientific understanding of blade manufacturing based on fiber preforms as well as fiber composites in general.

Project description

The MADEBLADES project targets further development and prototype demonstration of a disruptive design and manufacturing solution for large (>90m) offshore wind turbine blades.
The manufacturing platform is based on fiber preforms. A fiber preform is in this context a stack of reinforcement material, typically glass fiber fabric, cut to shape, stacked and fixated outside the wind turbine blade mould by a robotic preform unit. A number of different fiber preforms is required to build a wind turbine blade. The amount of preform material for an offshore wind turbine blade represents several tonnes and it is the layup time for this material that will be significantly reduced. Thereby, mould throughput is increased by the use of automation to first prepare fiber preforms and secondly to accurately place the preforms in the blade mould.


The main project activities include:
• Development and characterization of fiber preform materials
• Automation of preform lay-up using robots in a preform unit
• Improved offshore wind turbine blade design based on fiber preforms
• Automation of blade layup – handling of fiber preforms
Current manufacturing techniques are due to the size and complexity of wind turbine blades primarily based on manual processes, which are flexible but inefficient.

Key figures

Period:
2020 - 2024
Funding year:
2019
Own financial contribution:
18.38 mio. DKK
Grant:
33.26 mio. DKK
Funding rate:
64 %
Project budget:
51.64 mio. DKK

Category

Programme
EUDP
Technology
Wind
Case no.
64019-0514

Participants

LM WIND POWER A/S (Main Responsible)
Partners and economy
Partner Subsidy Auto financing
LM WIND POWER A/S 8,07 mio. DKK 12,10 mio. DKK
Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU) 9,83 mio. DKK 1,09 mio. DKK
Aalborg Universitet (Fredrik Bajers Vej) 11,45 mio. DKK 1,27 mio. DKK
AB Inventech A/S 3,92 mio. DKK 3,92 mio. DKK

Contact

Kontakperson
Klaus Jespersen
Comtact information

Jupitervej 6
Postnr.: 6000
Telefon: +4579840000

Contact email
info@lmwindpower.com

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