Refinement of defect detection in the contact and non-contact ultrasonic non-destructive testing of wind turbine blade using guided waves

Abstract The guided waves are widely used for the inspection of many composite structures as they can travel up to long distance along the thickness of the structure. Most of the times, the experimental investigations standalone is not able to locate and size the damages or defects due to dispersive, superimposed and scattered guided wave modes. Hence signal refinement of ultrasonic guided wave signals is required for identifying and characterizing the defects. In this work, disbond type defects presented on different locations of the segment of the wind turbine blade are estimated by applying the signal refinement techniques after experimental analysis. The experiment was carried out on a 1005 x 870 mm segment of wind turbine blade manufactured using a composite glass fiber reinforced plastic material. Two defects on the trailing edge (with diameter 15 and 25 mm) and three defects on the main spar (with diameters 25, 51 and 81 mm) of the WTB segment were investigated. The combination of macro fiber composite transducer, contact type and air-coupled transducers were used to transmit and receive the ultrasonic guided waves. The signal processing techniques are applied to the experimental signals for the estimation and characterization of defects.