As wind power grows in importance in the US and around the world, a leading manufacture of large composite wind blades found that using Plexus products has given them the performance, cost effectiveness and the reliability needed to be competitive in a demanding market.

Cost effective electrical generation depends on the relative size of a wind turbine, with bigger literally meaning better in terms of power generation. This market demand has lead to ever increasing size in wind turbine blades, but unfortunately, as the size increases, the performance requirements of the materials used in the assembly of the blade also increase exponentially.

Reaching a fine balance between the demands for flexibility and strength requirements can be difficult enough on its own. However, fatigue concerns and maintenance issues have pushed their way into the headlines after a number of highly publicized incidents. High performance engineered adhesives were needed to address all of these issues while still offering ease of manufacturing in a “shirtsleeve” environment.

After exhaustive testing with full sized pre-production prototypes the need for a better performing adhesive became clear. Fortunately, a commercially available Plexus product, already proven in another demanding composite industry, showed potential for addressing problems with flexibility and strength requirements. These Plexus products were successfully used on the initial blade designs for generators near the 1MW range, but as blade size was increased, new Plexus products were developed for the more demanding applications with higher generation capacity of today’s composite blades.

With the balanced strength and flexibility performance of Plexus adhesives, the manufacturer was able to achieve the flexibility and cyclic fatigue resistance needed to produce a world class Wind Turbine blade design. In addition, the ease of manufacturing and cost effective performance of the Plexus adhesive offers advantages that will translate into future, even larger, designs.