Structural temperatures of wind turbine blades under icing conditions

Abstract: As clean energy demand is on the rise and the wind energy sector in growth, locations with the highest wind potential are becoming of higher interest for wind farm projects, but they are located in colder regions. In cold climates, ice accumulation on wind turbine blades is a serious issue, both in terms of safety and performance. To prevent this, anti-icing technologies, such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S’s, electro-thermal elements are added to wind turbine blades’ construction. This thesis project consists of developing a method to investigate the heat transfer inside and out of wind turbine blades to assess the performance of the anti-icing system and most importantly, verify if it could lead to thermal damage of the blade’s adhesive. In an integrated MATLAB code, the heating requirement is calculated and the 2D conduction modelled based on the wind conditions. The output is a temperature map of the internal structure along with the points with the highest temperature for all adhesive locations, which shows that the selected heating power provided by the heating elements compromises the integrity of the adhesive and doesn’t perform to allow the surface temperature to reach the necessary threshold the prevent icing.