Manufacturing methods for assessing the impact of wrinkles in wind turbine blades

Abstract Wrinkles are defects prone to occur during the manufacturing process of wind turbine blades. Wrinkles can emerge at various locations of the structure, exhibiting a range of diverse shapes. Different manufacturing steps can lead to different defect types. This work presents different manufacturing methods to embed artificial wrinkle defects in laminates representing a typical defect that can be found in a wind turbine blade. Several methods are tested at coupon scale to design a critical wrinkle defect that can lead to the blade structural knock-down on the mechanical performance during high cycle fatigue operation. Following the selection of the defect types for investigation at the test coupon scale, the corresponding defect types are embedded while manufacturing a 12.6 m wind turbine blade.