Cure simulations of thick adhesive bondlines for wind energy applications

Curing of adhesive bondlines is a critical and time-consuming operation in wind turbine blade manufacturing. Significant variation in adhesive thickness can lead to important differences in thermal histories trough the adhesive bonds due to the exothermic nature of the cure process. Reducing bondline cure cycle time and avoiding adhesive overheating are two competing factors in the design of cure temperature cycles. Predictive models on the impact of adhesive thickness variability in bondline cure temperature cycle is currently limited. Adhesive curing and temperature evolution can be simulated by finite element (FE) models coupling the heat transfer problem with the cure kinetics of the adhesive. The cure kinetics of the adhesive system was characterized by isothermal differential scanning calorimetry experiments and implemented in the FE software Abaqus/CAE by user subroutines. Predictions from the FE model were validated experimentally against temperature readings from the curing of 10, 20, and 30 mm thick adhesive bondlines. To highlight the role that predictive models potentially have in the optimization of bondline cure cycles a 2D cross section model representing the trailing edge of a wind turbine blade was used as case study. It was demonstrated that computational models enable customizing cure profiles for nonuniform adhesive thicknesses, ensuring fully cured bondlines with acceptable mechanical properties.