Navigating wind turbine blade inspections comes with its rewards as well as challenges. For the past few years, we’ve used the Bladena Standards as our primary method when reviewing inspections.

The Bladena Standards break down inspection methods and outline the 13 distinct types of damage you might spot on blades, with severity rating ranging between 1 to 5. This is based on damage type, blade structure and location.

As the industry, and wind turbines, continue to move forward, we’ve adapted our solution to tackle new challenges head on.

Interpretation Variability
Customers can view damage and severity differently so we’ve made sure to adapt our solution to always fit the customer’s individual requirements.

We are consistently working on supporting additional standards. We can adapt to other standards on our systems based on the damage description such as type, size or depth. This gives maximum flexibility to our customers while also ensuring this key severity classification process is highly transparent, repeatable and consistent.

Evolving Blade Lengths
As renewable energy technology continues to advance, we have seen a growing trend of increasingly long blades. These extended blades enable turbines to cover a larger area and generate even more electricity.

However, longer blades can face different stresses and strains, leading to different levels of damage compared to their shorter counterparts. We have been laser-focused on ensuring our standards are up to the challenge.

Want to hear more? Get in touch to find out how you can incorporate Perceptual Robotics’ inspections into your operations and maintenance strategy.