David King from Gulf Wind Technology discusses RootFusion, their up-tower blade root bushing repair method. By eliminating the need for cranes, the solution reduces costs and operational complexity. And their NDT diagnostic process allows for non-invasive inspection and repair.
Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug!
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: David, welcome to the podcast again.
David King: Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's an exciting event that we're here at. So we're really looking forward to this.
Allen Hall: There is so much happening at Gulf Wind at the minutes. Uh, just been watching some of your intellectual property pop out and some of the new things that are at this show.
Uh, all kinds of areas that you're investing in, in terms of blade repairs that have been needed for probably two or three years and. At this point you, you have good solutions. The one I think we're most interested to hear about is the blade route, bushing, or insert. Repair that happens of tower because
Joel Saxum: everybody's asking about it.
I think that's the important thing there is, first off, we need to get some common language around what this problem is. Yeah. So everybody's calling it root, bushings root and this infusion like, ah, what are we actually calling? What are the terms, how you brand this? Exactly.
David King: Yeah. I mean, just you say it's really been a long time coming.
It's something we've been involved with now for well [00:01:00] over. Three years, and we got introduced originally as an RCA. And so, you know, when you get into something like a root cause analysis, you know, one of the first things you gotta do is actually establish the terms you're gonna use, establish the definitions, create a common framework that you can communicate around.
And so when it comes to this particular issue, a lot of it really starts with how do customers get sensitized to this? We've seen everything from some customers getting sensitized through, uh, unfortunately a blade failure. A blade that ends up on the ground.
Joel Saxum: Yeah,
David King: that's probably the worst scenario. We've seen others where they'll see things like.
Dust, uh, on the outside of the gel coat that's starting to build up, uh, gapping, where you have fundamentally a, a visible gap forming between the blade root and the pitch bearing, uh, where you see visible daylight in some cases. Yeah. Um, you really want to try and catch things, obviously much earlier than that, but kind of the, the, the common themes here all around a loss of connection between the metal root bushing and the composite laminate, which caused the blade to become loose from the pitch bearing.
So just kind of walk through that system maybe a little bit. Um, you've got the composite blade which has to transfer [00:02:00] load into a metal pitch bearing,
Joel Saxum: right?
David King: Metal pitch bearing's gotta be able to spin so the blade can pitch, produce, power, and do all the things we need to do. And it's one of the most complicated parts of the blade really.
'cause you're trying to transfer load from composite to metal and you have this massive stiffness difference between metal. And composites. And so it takes some very clever engineering to bring those things together and, um, get an even load distribution. And so the way that's done today is through a metal root bushing.
So it's essentially a, uh, precast metal piece, um, that has geometry to it that allows both mechanical and a chem...