Airborne Marine announced that the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) procedure of the seven Nautricity tidal blades was concluded positively early this month together with Nautricity Ltd.
Airborne Marine will shortly ship the seven blades to the assembly site of Nautricity where the blades will be mounted on the turbine that will be installed at the EMEC test centre in Orkney / Scotland.
The seven full RTM performance tidal blades are part of an important step towards commercialization of the Nautricity turbine concept. Actual under water testing clearly is of high importance both for the evaluation of the performance of the turbine and for the future optimization of the composite tidal blades.
The blades have a similar design and are manufactured with the same method as the planned commercial blades. This enables both Nautricity and Airborne to evaluate the real life performance of the blades and translate the obtained results directly back into the design and manufacturing process. These are important feedback steps for the optimisation of the tidal blades, which will be valuable in order to overcome the challenge to reduce the Tidal Cost of Energy in the coming years. At the same time these steps are expected to generate important design information that can serve as input to the design process for the larger blades, up to 8 meter, expected in 2014 and 2015.
Important to the Cost of Energy reduction is the use of the one-shot RTM manufacturing philosophy that Airborne is developing for tidal blades. This is essential in meeting the objective for maximum de-risked and highly reliable performance blades, as it eliminates any adhesive bonding in the blade structure, a risk area in current designs. By doing this, Airborne expects to reduce maintenance as much as possible and secure a lifetime of at least 15 years and facilitating clean green energy.
[mappress]
Press release, March 22, 2013; Image: airborne