A State-of-the-Art Review of Structural Testing of Tidal Turbine Blades

Tenis Ranjan Munaweera Thanthirige, Jamie Goggins, Michael Flanagan and William Finnegan ()
Additional contact information
Tenis Ranjan Munaweera Thanthirige: Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland
Jamie Goggins: Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland
Michael Flanagan: Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland
William Finnegan: Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-20

Abstract: Over the last two decades, the tidal energy industry has laid the groundwork for creating commercially viable tidal power generation projects to strengthen sustainable energy policies around the world. At the end of 2021, the cumulative installation of tidal stream technology that has been deployed in Europe reached 30.2 MW, where the majority of the installations are by small and medium-sized companies. Due to a growing demand among investors related to the global tidal energy industry, the reliability and safety of operational-stage tidal energy systems’ components are becoming increasingly important. In this context, companies, universities and research institutes are focusing on conducting large- and small-scale tests of tidal turbine elements to validate their projected design life, and major attention is being given to assessing the structural integrity of turbine blades. This review paper focuses on structural tests that have been reported for axial flow tidal turbine blades manufactured using composite materials around the world, highlighting the testing standards, equipment and instrumentation required. Overall, this review article discusses the state of the art in the structural testing of tidal turbine blades. In addition, it highlights the global concerns and research gaps to ensure the long-term sustainability of axial flow tidal turbine blades. In addition, the information contained in this article will be useful for formulating a smooth and reliable mechanism to enhance the evaluation process of the structural properties of tidal turbine blades in the future.

Keywords: structural testing; tidal energy; structural integrity; full-scale testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/10/4061/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/10/4061/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:10:p:4061-:d:1145838

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().