Paper Title
DEVELOPMENT OF HYBRID LAMINATE COMPOSITES WITHNANO SICWHISKERS REINFORCEMENT AND SELF HEALING CAPABILITYFOR WIND TURBINE BLADES

Abstract
Abstract - Wind energy is one of the many renewable energy sources that can effectively help energy providers. From two fundamental types of the wind turbines, offshore wind turbines can be more effective in producing electricity due to their longer blades that can produce more rated power, and onshore wind turbines can also be used for the simplicity of their installations.Offshore wind turbinesare subjected to severeweather andload conditions. Therefore, it is significant to have high strength and impact resistant structures. Considering the strength requirements as well as the cost efficiency, hybrid laminate composites are one of the most reasonable solutions. In addition to that, wind turbine blades may subject to impact loads such as bird strikes which leads to micro-crack generations. Therefore, self-healing capsules can be incorporated to the turbine blades to repair these structures in case of any microscale damages. Incorporation of self-healing capsules may generate a certain drop in the composites’ mechanical properties before impact and this can be compensated using efficient fillers including silicon carbide (SiC) whiskers. Thus, the benefit of adopting self-healing mechanism and SiC reinforcement in hybrid laminated composite structures is investigated in this work.Using the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) technique, the laminate composites after manufactured. Then, using tensile and Charpy impact tests, mechanical characterizations were carried out. Then microscopic observationswere performed. Multiple experimental characterizationswere used to examine the impact andthe ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and impact toughness of the structure are shown to rise by 30% and 45%, respectively, with the addition of SiC. Additionally, the presence of self-healing agents results in a 5% increase in UTS after sufficient time for the healing after the impact. Keywords - Offshore Wind Turbines, Self-Healing, Sic Whiskers, Hybridcomposites, Impact