Generating Reuse Possibilities for Retired Wind-Turbine Blades

EasyChair Preprint no. 257

Abstract

This work aims to identify reuses for wind-turbine blades that are retired when they reach the end of their technical life. Wind-turbine blades are made from fiber-composite materials, for which technologies for effective material-based recycling are extremely limited. An approach to avoid or postpone recycling is to repurpose wind-turbine blades in other applications, as they should not be reused as wind-turbine blades for safety reasons.

However, identifying promising reuses for wind-turbine blades is challenging due to their specific shape and material properties. In addition to issues of functional fixedness, wind-turbine blades are physically much larger than everyday objects with which people typically reason. Following a series of studies where engineering students were asked to identify wind-turbine-blade reuses, a method involving perspective-taking was developed and applied. The effects of this method on concept generation are reported and compared to SCAMPER, an existing design method. This work highlights the effectiveness of perspective-taking over SCAMPER for generating concepts, and incorporates psychological concepts, including Need for Closure and Regulatory Focus Theory.

Keyphrases: concept generation, pro-environmental behavior, Product reuse, Psychology, wind turbine blades

@Booklet{EasyChair:257,
  author = {S R X Jiang and David Inkermann and Thomas Vietor and L. H. Shu},
  title = {Generating Reuse Possibilities for Retired Wind-Turbine Blades},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 257},
  doi = {10.29007/wvlp},
  year = {EasyChair, 2018}}