Innovations in Securing Joints & Enhancing Connection Strength in Wind Turbines

A connection and fastening unit for lightning protection system components, such as receptors, in wind turbine blades. This unit features a closable cavity integrated into the blade wall, which houses connectors used to attach the lightning receptor and other related components.

Wind turbine blade components are designed to resist structural failures around apertures, such as holes and cutouts. The reinforcement element is a fiber material, such as a rope, applied around the periphery of the aperture. These fiber ropes distribute forces, preventing fracture formation.

An improved method for bonding a shear web to a wind turbine blade shell, addressing issues related to curing, waste, exposure, and quality found in other methods. This technique uses seals and a vacuum to precisely control adhesive application, creating a cavity around the shear web for the adhesive. This approach prevents adhesive squeeze-out, allows curing without air exposure, and ensures accurate adhesive placement and bond thickness.

A generator rotor design for wind turbines that simplifies construction and maintenance compared to traditional designs. This rotor features a rim with permanent magnet modules attached using anchors, which securely fix them in place. The modules have grooves along their sides, and the anchors fit into neighboring grooves to hold the magnets securely. This modular design allows for easy replacement of magnets and reduces the number of individual magnets that need to be attached to the rotor. An insertion tool can be used to guide the anchors into the grooves during assembly.

Mechanical reinforcement of large wind turbine blades made from composite materials, designed to increase the size range and operating speeds of wind turbines. This reinforcement is achieved without adding thickness, weight, or inertia to the blades. It involves integrating pre-shaped pultruded rods or profiles into the blade during manufacturing. These rods, made of high-strength carbon fibers, can withstand compression resistances exceeding 1,600 MPa. They serve as internal reinforcements, providing additional structural strength to the blade without increasing its thickness, weight, or inertia.

An improved wind turbine blade manufacturing method that strengthens glue joints between blade sections while reducing blade weight. This method uses spacer elements on the glue surfaces that come into contact when blade parts are joined. The spacers ensure a minimum glue thickness, enhancing joint integrity. Glue is injected between the spacers to fill the space. The spacers can either be integrated into the blade sections or attached separately.

A method for making wind turbine blades with integrated load-bearing reinforcing strips, addressing the challenges of handling long, heavy pultruded strips. This method uses a specialized feed apparatus to dispense coiled pultruded strips into the blade mold. The feed apparatus confines the coil to prevent uncoiling, allowing the strip to be fed into the mold while it uncoils in place. By securing the coil and feeding from the free end, potential energy is released safely.

Rotor for a wind turbine where the rotor blade has a longitudinal recess and transverse recess that share a common passage. This allows a longitudinal bolt to be inserted through a sleeve in the longitudinal recess and through the transverse recess to connect the blade to the hub. The sleeve helps align the bolt and prevents contact with the blade material.

Rotor lock system for wind turbines to secure the rotor blades and prevent rotation during maintenance. The system has a locking disk on the rotor shaft and multiple locking units around it. The locking units have a slidable locking shaft that can move linearly within a barrel and also angularly rotate about its axis. When inserted into apertures on the locking disk, the locking shaft can rotate to engage and lock the shaft in place.

Segmented pitch ring for blade pitch systems in wind turbines that allows larger pitch ring diameters without the need for large single-piece castings. The pitch ring is comprised of a combination of arc-shaped rolled and cast segments that fit together to form a circular ring. The rolled segments are made using a rolling process and the casted segments are made using a casting process. The segments are connected using bridge elements to maintain uniform stiffness across the interfaces. This enables making pitch rings with large diameters by using smaller, easier-to-manufacture segments.

An adjustable retention fixture for wind turbine components that allows flexible and customizable attachment to different shaped turbine parts. The fixture has end consoles to position and secure the member ends, columns extending outward, and rotatable fasteners to clamp the columns between the member end and fixture. The columns can be angled for stability. The fixture can be adjusted for different member sizes and shapes by sliding the end consoles, rotating the fasteners, and changing column positions.

A slip ring system for electrical connections between rotating and stationary parts of a wind turbine. It uses a slip ring apparatus with rotating and stationary electrodes to make the electrical connection. The slip ring is isolated from vibrations using a damping apparatus that prevents vibrations from damaging the slip ring.

Transport frames for wind turbine blades that are stackable, secure, and adjustable enough to allow longitudinal movement of the blade tip while preventing longitudinal movement of the root. The frames have a saddle to support the blade tip and a hinged clamp to secure the blade root. The clamp engages with studs protruding from the root face.

Concrete wind turbine towers that are assembled from cylindrical segments joined at vertical flanges. The invention enables more accurate and efficient assembly of wind turbine towers. It provides alignment tools and systems that mount on the tower segments' vertical flanges to guide their connection. These tools have heads with surfaces that engage and slide along opposing flanges during assembly, aligning them. This ensures the bolt holes in the flanges line up properly. The tools avoid direct contact with the flanges to prevent damage during alignment.

Offshore structure joint design to connect components like foundations and towers in a way that sealing against water ingress is improved over bolted flanges without requiring grouting. The joint has flanges that abut and are bolted together, with one flange covered by a skirt and the other flange surrounded by a collar. The skirt and collar confine an annular space around the bolted joint. A compressible sealing element is sandwiched in the space between the skirt and collar to seal against water entry into the joint.