Winds of change

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AeroForm Blade Testing 1987 - 1990

 

In December 1986 the company Danish Commercial Energy Research, who produced the Aerostar blades - went bankrupt. Except for Bonus, this happened to most of the Danish wind power companies including Vestas and Nordtank, as the Californian wind rush suddenly stopped in 1986.

My new AeroForm test center at Sparkær was inaugurated in august, and staff employed - 3 month later our main customer DCER thus bankrupted and owed us 1.2 mio Danish kroner.

Sparkær blade test centre in 1987

As a private independent Test Center we tested flagpoles, fibreglass tanks and also wind turbine blade hubs.

As we used to be working close together with Aerostar it took some time before the competitor LM Glasfiber, became a customer.

The ice was broken, when Henrik Stiesdal of Bonus, as a customer to LM asked LM Glasfiber to request us to perform a test of the uniformity of 6 standard LM 11 meter blades.

 

Testing a Windmatic blade hub
As RISØ did not have a test rig for blades longer than 11 meter, longer blades had to be tested at my AeroForm test rig at Sparkær.


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Static Test of a 17 meter blade in 1987

 

This also applied to fatigue tests

 

Fatigue test to failure of a 17 m blade in 1988

In 1988 RISØ wanted to enlarge their facilities at Risø, near Copenhagen. Kind people "told" the minister of energy, that a fully equipped test center already existed in the western part of Denmark - namely at Sparkær.

After nearly 3 years of negotiations and meetings, an agreement was signed between RISØ and AeroForm.

RISØ acquired the technical equipment from AeroForm and rented the buildings, land and test rigs as from July 1991.

Erik Grove-Nielsen was employed as a local head of the blade test facility.

 
 
   

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