Dear Colleagues,

The continuous demand for renewable sources of power production has led to a widespread interest in the growth of wind energy. Wind turbines, both in the onshore and offshore sectors, are in high demand, and continuous emphasis is made on their technological advancements. The general trend in the industry is the installation of larger wind turbines, as the power production increases with the rotor swept area as well as the cube of the wind speed. Although such trends are expected to increase the power production and the profitability, they pose quite complex operational challenges. One such critical issue is related with large wind turbine blades rotating with high tip speed in the range of 60–110 m/s during operation. This induces high-speed recurring contact with precipitation particles such as rain and hail among others, causing progressive material loss at the leading edge, which is referred to as leading edge erosion of wind turbine blades. This local surface roughening at the leading edge has been found to considerably reduce the aerodynamic efficiency of blades as well as the power output of the wind turbine. In addition, a major share of expenditure is spent on the repair and maintenance of wind turbine blades. Therefore, this Special Issue “Advancements in Leading Edge Erosion Science of Wind Turbine Blades” aims to discuss the scientific progress made in the academic and industrial community to solve this problem.

We invite authors from universities and industries to submit articles related to the theme of the Special Issue. This can include reviews, case studies, analyses, and evaluations from different disciplines that are relevant to the existing challenges related to the leading edge erosion of wind turbine blades. The Special Issue is open to discussing interesting results and challenges related to experiments and numerical as well as theoretical developments applied to leading edge erosion. These include advanced coating developments and accelerated erosion testing, numerical simulations using coupled fluid structure interaction methods such as smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite element methods (FEM), analytical leading edge erosion models, aerodynamic analysis, probabilistic analysis, and case studies on the development of novel wind turbine control algorithms, among others.

Dr. habil. Leon Mishnaevsky Jr.
Dr. Julie J. E. Teuwen
Dr. Amrit S. Verma
Dr. Weifei Hu
Guest Editors

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