Case studies of repurposing FRP wind blades for second-life new infrastructure

This paper presents two case studies of the repurposing projects of decommissioned wind turbine blades in architectural and structural engineering applications conducted under a multinational research project is entitled “Re-Wind” (www.re-wind.info) that was funded by the US-Ireland Tripartite program. The group has worked closely together in the Re-Wind Network over the past five years to conduct research on the topic of repurposing of decommissioned FRP wind turbine blades. Repurposing is defined by the ReWind team as the reverse engineering, redesigning and remanufacturing of a wind blade that has reached the end of its life on a turbine and taken out of service and then reused as a load-bearing structural element in a new structure (e.g., bridge, transmission pole, sound barrier, sea-wall, shelter). Further repurposing examples are provided in a publicly available Re-Wind Design Catalog. The Re-Wind Network was the first group to develop practical methods and design procedures to make these new “second-life” structures. The Network has developed design and construction details for two full-size prototype demonstration structures – a pedesrian bridge constructed in Cork, Ireland in January 2022 and a transmission pole to be constructed at the Smoky Hills Wind Farm in Lincoln and Ellsworth Counties, in Kansas, USA in the late 2022. The paper pro-vides details on the planning, design, analysis, testing and construction of these two demonstration projects.