Meteorological Data to Monitor, Prevent and Predict the Rain Erosion on the Leading Edge of Wind Turbine Blades

The rain erosion of wind turbine blades is caused by raindrop impacts on the leading edge and is an engineering challenge for the wind industry. This erosion damage due to rainfall is directly related to the raindrop impact energy. Therefore, using an energetic approach, three different variables, namely the total kinetic energy, the kinetic power and the kinetic energy per impact, to characterise the erosion capacity of the raindrop impacts have been calculated using actual meteorological data from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) of the last 25 years. These erosive variables need to be used as a joined set of variables to monitor, predict and prevent the rain erosion damage on the leading edge blades. Moreover, this work has also analysed the effect of different velocity contributions, the log time of data, type of rain and period of data to be considered. Finally, as the main findings, the wind speed is the main contribution to the erosive variables and the intensity of the rainfall, as well as the frequency in log meteorological data, are also significant factors affecting the three erosive variables.