The energy turnaround and the push to expand renewable energy generation is posing major challenges for manufacturers of wind energy plants. To ensure economic viability, efforts are focusing first on improving the availability and productivity of existing production facilities. One of the wind energy industry’s top priorities is to maximize utilization rates by speeding up manufacturing processes in order to reduce unit costs and achieve a rapid payback on investments. The use of new material technologies is making an important contribution to this.
In rotor blade production, one obvious way of accelerating the process would be to use polyurethane-based adhesives for rotor blade bonding, although these represent a very recent development in the wind power industry. Traditionally, blade shells and spars have been bonded using two-component epoxy resins. While these materials reliably meet the extremely high mechanical specifications, they are rapidly reaching their limits when it comes to the automation of manufacturing processes. New technologies are therefore needed to speed up and automate production.
Henkel is now presenting a solution in the shape of its newly developed polyurethane adhesive Macroplast UK 1340. The specialist in high-performance polyurethane adhesives has succeeded in developing a PUR adhesive that satisfies the specific mechanical requirements for use in the wind power industry and, on top of this, makes rotor blade production more efficient.
