The original design incorporated a stainless steel shank to hold the blade in place on the hub, but after initial testing the weight proved problematic and we were commissioned to design a composite shank (or root) with stainless steel threaded rings and smooth bearing faces to reduce weight.
Utilising the existing tooling and developing a technique of false tools, removable sections and bladder moulding allowed us to laminate and bond the 'trapped shape' stainless steel components in one cure operation. This reduced the weight from 1.8 kg per blade to 1kg making an improvement to loading of related turbine components.
Forty blades were ordered and final weights of the blades varied by no more than 10gm.
The blades are destined for the 1 MW rated turbine developed by Oceanlinx based in Sydney.
Completion of the blades saw us also win the contract to build the nosecone for the turbine.
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