Fatigue lifetime prediction model for leading edge protection coating systems of wind turbine blades

Rain erosion of wind turbine blades causes increased maintenance cost and shortened intervals. Lifetime prediction of coating systems is challenging because of complexities in determining liquid droplet impact pressures, resulting coating stress history and high strain rate fatigue parameters. The current work discusses a novel modeling method for characterizing single point and distributed impact fatigue lifetimes. The effects of changes in material, impact and geometric parameters on the predicted lifetimes were studied. Droplet diameter and coating layer thickness were found to play an important role in the lifetime of the system. Overlap of stress histories led to a difference between single point and distributed impact location lifetimes. The resulting model allows more elaborate analysis of LEP performance.