A New Vascular System Highly Efficient in the Storage and Transport of Healing Agent for Self-Healing Wind Turbine Blades

Self-healing wind turbine blades offer a substantial offset for costly blade repairs and failures. We discuss the efforts made to optimize the self-healing properties of wind turbine blades and provide a new system to maximize this offset. Copper wire coated by paraffin wax was embedded into fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) samples incorporated with Grubbs' first-generation catalyst. The wires were extracted from cured samples to create cavities that were then injected with the healing agent, dicyclopentadiene (DCPD). Upon sample failure, the DCPD and catalyst react to form a thermosetting polymer to heal any crack propagation. Three-point bending flexural tests were performed to obtain the maximum flexural strengths of the FRP samples before and after recovery. Using those results, a hierarchy of various vascular network configurations was derived. To evaluate the healing system's effect in a real-life application, a prototype wind turbine was fabricated and wind tunnel testing was conducted. Using ultraviolet (UV) dye, storage and transport processes of the healing agent were observed. After 24 h of curing time, Raman spectroscopy was performed. The UV dye showed dispersion into the failure zone, and the Raman spectra showed the DCPD was polymerized to polydicyclopentadiene (PDCPD). Both the flexural and wind tunnel test samples were able to heal successfully, proving the validity of the process.