Imprinted Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Vascular Networks for Creating Self-Healing Wind Turbine Blades

Self-healing wind turbine blades can reduce costs associated with maintenance, repair, and energy compensation. Self-healing is the ability to sustain and recover from damage autonomously. We discuss the efforts made to optimize the self-healing properties of wind turbine blades and provide a new system to maximize this offset. This system utilizes vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM), and 3D printed templates to imprint a vascular network onto a single glass fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheet. This imprinted layer is infused with Grubbs first-generation catalyst and filled with dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) which is then sealed using plastic sheeting. The sealed imprint layer is embedded into a larger multilayer FRP prior to VARTM. After VARTM, the completed multilayer FRP is fully capable of self-healing microcracks. Three-dimensional printed templates with square grid and hexagonal patterns were used to evaluate how differences in DCPD distribution affect overall recovery. Three-point bending tests were performed to obtain the maximum flexural strengths of the FRP samples before and after self-healing to evaluate recovery. Overall, with the imprint layer method, the catalyst was focused in one area of the complete FRP, reducing the amount of unused catalyst present in the FRP. Also, the samples created using the imprint method were able to achieve a maximum average recovery of over 200% and a storage efficiency of 100%.