A pioneering experiment to discover unknown failure mechanisms of future offshore wind turbine blades (DiscoverBlaDE)

 What are the new mechanisms that would govern the structural failure of future offshore wind turbine blades, which scale up continuously and are installed more in harsh offshore environments. DiscoverBlaDE answers this question by developing a novel full-scale experiment to discover hidden failure modes and the governing failure mechanisms, by reproducing realistic extreme dynamic loads to collapse the blade in full-scale in a laboratory with advanced testing methods, measurement techniques and data analytics The project provides fundamental knowledge for developing new structural models and design methods of the future wind turbine blades, potentially reducing the large-scale risks of structural failure caused by the unknown mechanisms under extreme dynamic loads.