Sequencing Blade Inspections Around Team Fatigue Cycles

A Hornsea blade pair ended week two of a leading-edge erosion campaign with the wrong rotor repaired. The drone survey had flagged turbine H-47; the rope team worked H-74. The paperwork trail pointed to a handover on day 11 when one tech had been awake for 19 hours. This post is about why blade inspection sequencing has to match the team's fatigue cycle, not the weather window.

Blade inspection campaigns follow the weather. A leading-edge erosion (LEP) sweep across a 174-turbine North Sea field gets slotted into whatever window the metocean opens, and the rope access pair gets told which turbine to climb via a list that was built on Friday and partly rewritten on Tuesday. The drone crew feeds high-resolution imagery into an MDPI-reviewed workflow that combines LiDAR, thermal, and ultrasonic overlays; the rope team works off whichever version of the list reached the CTV that morning.