Abstract:
Blade icing can seriously impair the secure and stable operation of wind turbines. At present, electrothermal anti-icing is regarded as the most effective and dependable method for preventing ice accumulation on wind turbine blades. However, challenges persist, including uneven heating within the anti-icing area, localized ice formation, and an excessive number of partitions leading to an unnecessarily intricate anti-icing system. This study introduces an innovative approach that the PTC material is employed for adaptive electrothermal anti-icing of wind turbine blades. Through in-situ polymerization, a low Curie point PTC material with a Curie temperature point of 1 ℃ is successfully synthesized. Subsequently, based on the resistance-temperature characteristics of the material, an electrothermal anti-icing model for wind turbine blades is established and numerically simulated. The results indicate that when the low Curie point PTC material is used for electrothermal anti-icing of wind turbine blades, the anti-icing area can be heated more uniformly without the need for segmenting the anti-icing area. Under a certain operating voltage, the low Curie point PTC material demonstrates the ability to adaptively adjust the heating power across varying ambient temperatures and wind speeds. Impressively, even after undergoing 100 cycles of resistance-temperature testing, the material retains a robust adaptive adjustment ability. Eventually, the adaptive adjustment ability of the material is verified experimentally. The results of this research lay a solid foundation for the subsequent investigations on the wind turbine blade anti-icing system based on the low Curie point material.