VitriEdge: Repairable & Durable Vitrimer Coatings for Wind Turbine Blade Leading Edges

Technical Report · Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 EDT 2025

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/3004274· OSTI ID:3004274

Hubbard, Amber M. ^[1]; Copenhaver, Katie ^[1]; Korey, Matthew ^[1]; Lamm, Meghan E. ^[1]; Withrow, Colby ^[2]; McGill, Tristan ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
2. Mercer Univ., Macon, GA (United States)

The primary goal of this Level 1b incubator project was to explore the use of vitrimer coatings for repair of leading-edge erosion on end-of-life wind turbine blade surfaces, beyond coating strength of adhesion which has previously been demonstrated in the Level 1a project. Uniform vitrimer coatings (thickness: 400 µm) were applied to two end-of-life wind turbine blades for flexural, fatigue, and laminate tensile testing where the addition of the coating did not produce any statistical variation in tensile properties with minor drops in flexural strength for some laminate formulations. However, a <2% variation in storage modulus was measured for laminate structures (i.e., blade samples with vitrimer coatings) across 100,000 flexural cycles and upon laminate tensile failure, the vitrimer coatings displayed no visible signs of delamination. In addition, three methods to heal vitrimer coating damage was displayed: oven heating, addition of hot water, and a forced convection heat gun. All three heating and healing mechanisms demonstrated significant healing with scratch depths decreasing between 79-91% at healing times ranging between 1-min and 10-minutes. Finally, a water jet machine was used to simulate rain erosion for both the blade surfaces and vitrimer-coated blade surfaces where the diameter and depth of the damage was recorded as a function of exposure time, water pressure, height of exposure, and angle of exposure. Of interest, while the vitrimer coating did not significantly lessen the damage experienced during rain erosion, the addition of vitrimer composite coatings(5 wt.% mica addition) did result in a crack-resistant, durable coating capable of self-healing behavior and in all cases the angle of rain exposure was the most critical parameter explored. It is crucial to continue exploring this space where vitrimer coatings are of interest for both their self-healing properties and potential use as reversible adhesives.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 3004274
• Report Number(s): ORNL/SPR--2025/4241
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
42 ENGINEERING