Method for making a continuous laminate, in particular suitable as a spar cap or another part of a wind energy turbine rotor blade
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorRainer Arelt
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The method for making a continuous laminate, in particular suitable as a spar cap or another part of a wind energy turbine rotor blade comprises the steps of providing a plurality of parallel fibers, embedding the fibers in a curable matrix material, curing the matrix material so as to obtain a fiber reinforced laminate having upper and lower major surfaces, and forming channels into at least one of the upper and lower major surfaces of the laminate wherein the channels on the upper and/or lower major surfaces are angled with respect to the direction of the fibers.
Claims18
A method for making a continuous laminate for part of a wind energy turbine rotor blade, the method comprising:
- providing a plurality of parallel fibers;
- embedding the fibers in a curable matrix material;
- curing the matrix material to form a fiber reinforced continuous laminate for the part of the rotor blade, the continuous laminate comprising opposite upper major surface and lower major surface;
- forming channels into the upper major surface and forming channels into the lower major surface, wherein the channels on the upper major surface and the channels on the lower major surface extend substantially to an edge of the fiber reinforced continuous laminate and form different angles with respect to a direction of the fibers;
- creating a stack of fiber reinforced continuous laminates, wherein the channels in adjacent upper and lower major surfaces of adjacent fiber reinforced continuous laminates form infusion channels;
- and
- infusing a curable material into the infusion channels, wherein the curable material is substantially homogenously distributed in the infusion channels to form the continuous laminate for part of a wind enemy turbine rotor blade.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.