Improving Design Efforts and Assembly Efficiency of Rotor Blade Carriers through Modularisation

Rotor blade carriers are custom build for each wind turbine rotor blade type. This causes high efforts in design processes, assembly preparation and raises the number of product variants. This paper presents an approach to apply the concept of modularisation on rotor blade carriers to induce serial production methods, optimise the easiness of assembly and reduce design efforts per order by using standardised modules in combination with few custom designed parts. The design of an easy to operate mechanical interface for module connection enables variability and life cycle extension by providing the option to re-use and re-combine modules.