Proposal of new zoning concept considering lightning protection of wind turbine blades

Lightning strike thermal damage model for glass fiber reinforced polymer matrix composites and its application to wind turbine blades

“…It has been reported that the wind turbine blade tip is more susceptible to lightning strike than the remaining parts of the blade [28]. Thus, only the tip region top panel of the Sandia 100-meter All-glass Baseline Wind Turbine Blade (SNL 100-00) is studied.…”

“…Two types of GFRP composite fabrics are used in the SNL 100-00 composite blade tip region [28]: VectorPly E-LT 5500 unidirectional [0] 2 E-glass fiber vinyl ester resin matrix fabric (fiber volume fraction V f ¼ 54%) and SNL triaxial [±45] 2 [0] 2 E-glass fiber vinyl ester resin matrix fabric ðV f ¼ 44%Þ. The SNL triaxial fabric is fabricated by stacking one layer of VectorPly E-LT 5500 unidirectional fabric upon two layers of Knytex DBM 1708 woven biaxial [±45] E-glass fiber vinyl ester resin matrix fabric [27].…”

Verification of Lightning Protection Measures

“…Considering the blades, it implies that air terminations (receptors) are typically distributed along the length from radius 20m and outwards, although service experience shows that inboard receptors are only struck occasionally. Data supporting the fact that mainly the blade tips are struck was presented initially in 2006 Madsen et al 2010). Based on the requirements in the IEC 61400-24 of mandatory verification, numerical tools capable of evaluating and verifying wind turbine blade protection designs have been invented.…”

Modeling lightning strike behavior in the near field of elevated systems

“…The Poisson equation has traditionally been solved numerically using Finite Element method in the past studies of lightning interaction with grounded structures [27,28,31,32]. However, the numerical schemes can be fairly complex, computationally intensive, and prone to large computational errors.…”

“…The model was formulated using the Poisson equation that governs the distribution of electric potential around a grounded structure. Their model has been used to study the interaction of lightning with buildings and conventional wind turbines [27][28][29][30][31][32]. However, none of these studies investigated lightning behavior around grounded structures deployed at very high elevations above the ground surface.…”