Process Modelling of Thermoplastic Composites for Wind Turbine Blade

Process Modelling of Thermoplastic Composites for Wind Turbine Blade: This work proposes process modeling simulation for future manufacturing of wind turbine blades using fully recyclable thermoplastic composites. The formation of crosslinks in thermosets composites makes them non-eco-friendly and difficult to recycle, resulting in a massive amount of composite material to the waste stream. The use of thermoplastic resins versus their thermosetting counterparts can potentially introduce cost savings due to non-heated tooling, shorter manufacturing cycle times, and recovery of raw materials from the retired part. Thermoplastic resin systems have long been discussed for use in large-scale composite parts but have yet to be exploited by the wind energy industry because of their manufacturability. A newly developed ELIUM thermoplastics by Arkema has been studied for its unique combination of mechanical properties and manufacturability. ELIUM is characterized by high impact resistance, post-thermoform ability, and it is fully recyclable. Additionally, ELIUM can be manufactured through infusion and in-situ polymerization, enabling mass production of large components. Specifically, ELIUM-150 is used in this work, which has a low viscosity and will be suitable for manufacturing wind blades through the infusion process. Process modeling is performed using Abaqus to predict the temperature evolution and Degree of Polymerization via user-written subroutines. A wind turbine blade geometry is modeled accounting for its various components, composite lay-ups, and manufacturing cycle. Additional modeling is proposed to analyze the spar-cap area of the blade. An optimization study is performed to determine a polymerization cycle that would guarantee the fastest possible time to homogenously polymerize the composite wind blade while maintaining a low exothermic heat of reaction during manufacturing.