Journal of Applied Science and Engineering

Published by Tamkang University Press

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Optimization of Water Droplet Impact on GFRP Blade Materials with Taguchi Technique

Amanpreet Singh1, Mohit Yadav2, Osamah Ibrahim Khalaf3, Mohammed Sahib Mahdi Altaei4, Khushwant Singh5, and Fernando Moreira6,7

1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chandigarh University, Mohali-140413, Punjab, India

2Department of Mathematics, University Institute of Sciences, Chandigarh University, Mohali-140413, Punjab, India

3Department of Solar, Al-Nahrain Renewable Energy Research Center, Al-Nahrain University, Jadriya, Baghdad, Iraq

4Department of Computer Science, College of Science, Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq

5University School of Information, Communication & Technology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi-110075,
India

6Research on Economics, Management, and Information Technologies (REMIT), Universidade Portucalense, 4200-072, Porto, Portugal

7IEETA, Aveiro University, Aveiro, Portugal

Received: Decembe 10, 2025
Accepted: March 31, 2026
Publication Date: April 25, 2026

上傳圖片

Mass Loss Due to Impact Velocity 

 Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.

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The aim of the research is to compare the erosion performance under the effect of polyurethane coated and uncoated wind turbine blade (WTB) with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) material in offshore environmental conditions. The experiments were conducted on erosion tester using two parameters such as impact velocity (60, 90,120 m/s) and impact angle (30°,45°,60°). The experimental design was generated with the help Taguchi L9 array. Polyurethane spray coating was applied and offshore conditions were simulated using salt water. Furthermore, SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) testing was done to study the surface morphology and Minitab software was used for statistic and Origin software was used to create graphs. The main finding shows that the impact velocity is the most influencing factor as compared to impact angle. Moreover, the surface
morphology reveals the ductile mechanism of erosion and 93% more mass loss was measured in uncoated surface than coated surface.

Keywords: Taguchi; Erosion; Wind Turbine Blade; Composites; Scanning Electron Microscope; Polyurethane Coating.

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