Materials for Wind Power

Produced as a Single Unit

The scale of the manufacturing operations is also extraordinary since the blades are produced as single units. The process involves laying several hundred fiberglass mats into a half shell. Then gantry cranes bring out a prefabricated spar attached to a tubular frame. The spar comes to rest in a precisely calculated position in the half shell. In the final step, the construction of the upper blade half shell is prepared. The gantry cranes lower a foam element to the left and the right of the spar. The element serves as an assembly aid for the first balsa wood layer, which the operators \cover with more fiberglass mats. As soon as the upper mold shell is in place and airtight, the automatically controlled equipment creates a vacuum in the interior and injects several tons of epoxy resin into it. Once heated for a fairly long period after their integration, the components become a single unit.

Extremely Heavy Lightweight

When finished, the rotor blade weighs nearly 30 tons. That’s a massive weight, but when you consider that it sweeps over an approximately 21,900 square-meter (about 26,200 square-yard) area, it is light as a feather – with extreme tensile strength and enormous resistance to bending. When it comes to rotor blades, everything comes down to these characteristics. Without the progress that has been made in plastics technology, wind power would not have become the industry’s top player.

Plastics are our current focus. On single-use plastic as a burden on society – and how we can deal with the problem. And on the question of whether plastic can be a solution.
You can find more on the topic “Plastic – Breakthrough and Burden” in the latest edition of our magazine ESSENTIAL.