A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN TWO RESIN INFUSION STRATEGIES IN THE MANUFACTURING OF POLYMER COMPOSITE WIND TURBINE BLADE VIA RESIN INFUSION PROCESS

This report explains about the project entitled Resin Infusion Strategies for Wind
Turbine Blade. The proposed design for this project is wind turbine blade which will
be infused later. The goal of this project is to investigate and determine the effective
infusion strategy for the wind turbine blade in order to achieve uniform resin
distribution in shortest time throughout the wind turbine blade design. One of the
most important parameter in Resin Infusion process is the strategy of filling. The
location of the resin start to penetrate and the vacuum will be applied is much
depends on the design to infused. There are several strategies, namely point feeding,
edge feeding, line feeding and multiple line feeding. As the design getting more and
more complex, the complete wetting of the fiber by resin will become increasingly
difficult and the resin flow front progression will become slower. The proper
infusion strategy and good technique is needed to achieve a better fiber-to-resin ratio
for the final product and good filling time taken for infusion process to complete.
Trial and error experiments need to be conducted several times to learn the technique
and familiarize with the resin infusion process and thus can decrease unsuccessful
experiments later on. After conducted two blade resin infusion experiments, it can be
conclude that the shortest distance between the resin line inlet and vacuum line
outlet will lead to a shorter time filling.