A digital process for reconstructing wind turbine blade geometry from point cloud data

The first generation of wind turbines are being retired, and a tremendous number of wind turbine blades are coming out of service. Architects and engineers are developing re-use ideas for these blades and are wrestling with their complex geometries and materiality. This paper details a four-phase process for reconstructing the geometry of wind turbine blades, starting from a point-cloud scan and finishing with a digital model that represents the blade and its associated properties. The process builds on earlier work that created an airfoil database to store the normalized coordinates of publicly available airfoil profiles. This profile database is traversed to match airfoil shapes to cross-sections found in the point-cloud. Root, transition, and airfoil shapes are matched to cross-sections along the full blade to reconstruct the outer geometry. Based on data from the interior of the blade, the structural spar box is reconstructed. The addition of thickness and material property data allows for calculation of section properties at multiple stations along the blade. The resulting 3D geometry and the associated data is used for architectural design and engineering calculations to develop second-life applications for wind blades. The paper demonstrates the workflow through examples from a GE 37-meter blade and an LM 13.4-meter blade.