System Design and Implementation of Wall Climbing Robot for Wind Turbine Blade Inspection

Abstract

Wind Turbines (WT) became essential renewable energy sources as the WT farms contribution reached megawatts scale. However, wind turbine blades (WTB) are subjected to failure due to running in harsh environments such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation, ice, temperature variation, dirt, and salt. Consequently, a periodic inspection process is required. In this paper, the design and implementation of a scaled down prototype magnetic climbing robot is proposed that can be used for WT blade inspection. The robot is equipped with two arms that can be extended one meter long to come close to the blade for inspection. Each arm is equipped with a gripper that can hold an inspection tool of weight up to one kilogram.