Perspective for Fibre-Hybrid Composites in Wind Energy Applications

Abstract

Increasing the efficiency of wind turbines will be vital for the wind energy sector to continue growing. The drive for increased efficiency is pushing turbine manufacturers to shift from glass fibre composite blades towards carbon/glass fibre-hybrid composite blades. This shift brings significant challenges in terms of optimising the design and understanding the failure of these new blade materials. This review therefore surveys the literature on fibre-hybrid composites, with an emphasis on aspects that are relevant for turbine blade materials. The literature on tensile, flexural, compressive, and fatigue performance is critically assessed and areas for future research are identified. Numerical simulations of fibre-hybrid composites have reached a reasonable maturity for tensile failure, but significant progress is required for flexural, compressive, and fatigue failure. Fatigue failure of fibre-hybrid composites in particular, requires more careful attention from both a modelling and experimental point of view.

Characterisation of Hybrid Carbon Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (C/GFRP) of Balanced Cross Ply and Quasi Isotropic under Tensile and Flexural Loading

“…On the other hand, glass fibres (GF) which have much lower strength than carbon fibres but are tougher due to higher strain-to-failure. It has been proved that incorporation of GF into CF is possible to improve the failure strain of CFRP, turning the materials to a combination system called hybrids [2] [3]. Apart from the toughness issue, CF are also very expensive which is regarded as the main drawback why CFRP are only popular in aero industries and automotive sector where weight saving is considered to be the primary concern [3].…”

“…Several scholars provide recommendations for experimental measurements of the hybrid effect, which is a synergetic increase of the failure strain of low elongation fibres when hybridised with higher elongation fibres. The hybridisation may also result in the improvement of composites mechanical properties characterised by the increase of ultimate tensile strain compared with those of low elongation non-hybrid fibre reinforced composites [2][5][6] [5]. Like most materials, fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) face the strength versus toughness dilemma.…”

Hybrid Effect in In-Plane Loading of Carbon/Glass Fibre Based Inter- and Intraply Hybrid Composites

“…The aim of this study was to develop novel unidirectional hybrid fabrics and their composites with different hybrid configurations, namely interply and intraply, and investigate their mechanical performance in tensile and compressive loading vis-à-vis reference homogeneous non-hybrid composites. Moreover, this study specifically focused on application developments for hybrid composites specifically in the field of sports and leisure products such as skies and wind blade applications such as spar caps [20,30,33,34]. Section 2 addresses the materials, reinforcement and composite fabrication methods and the test procedures to characterise the composite properties.…”

Investigating the mechanical behaviour and damage response of flax fibres hybridized with aramids

“…Most commonly, synthetic fibers such as Carbon fiber, Glass and Aramid fibers are mixed and matched to improve mechanical performance [23][24][25]. Swolfs et al [35] recommended Carbon/Glass composite for multidirectional loading applications such as wind turbine blades. Valenca et al [23] showed that combining Glass and Kevlar highly improved mechanical strength and impact performance, when compared to plain Kevlar.…”