Automated Scanning for Quality Assurance
All manufacturers of rotor blades for contemporary wind turbines are concerned with the need for an efficient and safe quality assurance (QA) of blade integrity. The manufacture of blades is still a largely manual lay-up and assembly process, where variability in quality is a key issue for the ultimate blade performance.
By Morgan Troedsson, Product Manager, FORCE Technology, Denmark
Automated ultrasonic inspection systems have been successfully used for a number of years. They have followed a continuous process of evolution, from uncomplicated manual inspection systems to more advanced track scanner and crawling scanner concepts. A regular meander scan pattern is currently the state of the art. It provides high-resolution 3D data on the inherent composite structure.
