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Having successfully completed three major research projects (CORTIR, RATZ and LEX), Bladena has been successful to continue the collaboration with EUDP and 27 companies in a new 2-years project called CORTIR Phase II. The partners cover the entire value chain involving 15 wind turbine owners (WTO), 5 Service companies (ISP), 1 Manufacturer (OEM), 1 Insurance, 2 R&D Consultancies as well as two Danish universities.  Partners are: Bladena, AAU Civil Engineering, DTU Mechanical Engineering, Kirt x Thomsen, Global Wind Service, ECC, RWE, Engie, Hofor, EDF Energy, Equinor, EWII, Acciona Energy, Arise, Enel, Statkraft, SSE, Total Eren, Shell, Northland Power, RES, GEV, DanWind Construction, FlexWind, Vent-To, Codan and Nordex. Project deliverables The main deliverables are a new retrofit solution designed for high forces in the Root-Transition Zones (RTZ) of blades, a new innovative state-of the art operation and maintenance strategy and lastly further developments of the Cost and Risk Tool (CAR Tool). Bladena and partners have a budget of 3.2 mill. Euro to deliver the results. As the wind industry is continuously growing, so are the wind turbines. With increasing blade lengths structural failures of the blades become a significantly bigger technical risk as well as financial risk, resulting in increased cost for repair and loss of Annual Energy Production (AEP). One of the most critical structural issues of large +60m wind turbine blades is debonding of the shear web from the load-carrying spar caps in the root-transition zone. This failure mode is today occurring more frequently due to significantly increased fatigue peeling forces in the adhesive bondlines.  As debonding of the shear web can fast lead to very critical blade failures, and as of yet no repair solution has proven more than temporary, this failure mode has become a significant risk, especially for big wind turbines, where limited access may result in extended periods of downtime and consequently AEP losses. The RTZ-Solution will fulfill a need in the market and will be uniquely designed for the high forces in the root-transition zone of the blades, removing the root cause of the shear web disbond failure mode and providing more reliable blades for the WTOs. NIFIS will be a New Innovation Field Inspection Strategy developed to be used as a decision support tool. Finally, the Cost and Risk Tool (CAR Tool) developed in house will be used to analyse different maintenance strategies and this will be coupled with field experience and the findings and conclusions gathered in NIFIS, easily accessible and ready to be used by WTOs and ISPs.
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