Experimental Study on Lightning Attachment Manner of the ice-melting
Wind Turbine Blades
Abstract
Wind turbines often suffer from lightning strikes, iceing and other
disasters. The installation of an electrothermal ice-melting device on
the blade can effectively remove icing, but it will increase the risk of
lightning strikes on the blade. In order to study the change of lighting
attachment manner and the reliability of the existing standard lightning
protection device after the blade is retrofitted with ice-melting
device. This paper designs a 1:30 scaled-down rotatable 3WM ice-melting
wind turbine blade for long gap lightning discharge test. Comparing the
interception efficiency of the lightning receptors before and after the
installation of the ice-melting device on the blade, the results show
that when the lightning leader develops on the windward side of the
blade, the ice-melting blade has the phenomenon of lightning receptor
failure, lightning strike at the junction of the ice-melting device and
the blade body. In the most serious case, the protection efficiency of
the lightning receptor is only 55%. The ice-melting device ‘ shields ’
some of the lightning receptor, and the charge around the blade is
distributed in an arc shape after the blade rotates, so that the
ice-melting device is broken down at a lower voltage. Through the
lightning strike probability model of ice-melting blade, it is found
that there is a great risk of lightning at the junction of ice-melting
device and blade body. The results reveal the lightning attachment
manner of the ice-melting blade and further guide its lightning
protection design.