Ecobonding of Composite Wind Turbine Blade Structural Parts Using Eco-friendly Adhesives

Structural adhesives used to bond composite blade parts have to fulfil sustainability requirements and REACH regulation in addition to quality design requirements in terms of specific stiffness, specific strength, fatigue and weathering characteristics. To appreciate the impacts involved in the bonding process (e.g., harmful substances, amount of VOC emissions, toxic chemicals, carcinogens, odours, ...), designers and users should have more knowledge and better innovation policies on how to integrate health and environmental aspects into the bonding procedures to enable a sustainable production coupled with green manufacturing practices. With this argument as an objective, the aim of the present paper is to innovate and develop a new approach providing high performance of adhesively-bonded composite blade half-shells in terms of Quality-Health-Environment interrelated issues. Alternative solutions leading to new generation of environmentally-friendly adhesives can be achieved through the integration of a new eco-factor, λa, into the classical bonding formulations. Further to that, shear stress eco-ratio, Λ, versus adhesive lap ratio, Φ, for different values of λa were plotted and some conclusions were drawn.