Aviation Enterprises Ltd has, since 2002 been developing a wealth of experience in design and manufacture of Tidal Turbine (TT) blades. As a result of this momentum, and interest expressed in our capabilities by other UK tidal turbine developers, AEL decided, in 2005, to apply its expertise and develop this business to provide a specialist composite TT blade design, development and manufacture service, focussing R&D on reliable design, efficient use of materials and minimising development and production costs.   In particular by;

 Effective materials selection and establishment of a comprehensive materials database. Manufacturers’ data is rarely considered definitive and necessitates independent testing.

 Research into the effects of long-term immersion in seawater, something that is a relatively new requirement.

 The review of adhesives and surface preparation techniques. Again, reference material for previous work is unlikely to be available.

 Investigating and meeting the standards and safety factors applied by the Certification Authorities. 

 Investment in our own suite of numerical tools and production and tooling equipment to minimise costs.

Certification Authorities, without adequate and reliable data, will always tend to the conservative and, even then, particularly in the case of design details, without specific testing, fatigue life is extremely difficult to predict.    AEL has experience of working with both DNV & GL and DNV is currently overseeing the AEL R&D programme to ensure acceptable standards are used and reliable data is developed.

These programmes will accelerate the technology, minimise R & D further expenditure on background testing and minimise the capital cost of blade development providing reliable data to ensure that fatigue life is achieved, and scheduled and unscheduled maintenance minimised. 

As the data base and confidence in the material performance grows so higher strain allowables will be accepted, leading to the design lower t/c ratio blades which may exhibit lower cavitation losses, and - in turn - permit higher rotational speeds with attendant savings in the power train capital cost and/or the ability to run faster and, therefore, with improved efficiency.

Success will ultimately be measured by the level of data exploitation through immediate incorporation into a generic design methodology being specifically developed for TT blades at AEL. The test programme will initially tackle the lower levels of a typical 'pyramid' test programme, which is the standard approach to structural qualification when developing safety critical or high value composite structures.


Aviation Enterprises Ltd.
Membury Airfield,
Lambourn,
Berks.,
RG17 7TJ
UK

Tel
Sales; 01488-72224
Tech; 01488-670491
Fax;   01488-72263
Mob;  07711-618347