You are on page 1of 11

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257 DOI 10.

1007/s10443-011-9193-z

Structural Analysis and Design of the Composite Wind Turbine Blade


Wen-Hsiang Wu & Wen-Bin Young

Received: 22 November 2010 / Accepted: 28 February 2011 / Published online: 12 March 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The wind turbine blade sustains various kinds of loadings during the operation and parking state. Due to the increasing size of the wind turbine blade, it is important to arrange the composite materials in a sufficient way to reach the optimal utilization of the material strength. Most of the composite blades are made of glass fibers composites while carbon fibers are also employed in recent years. Composite materials have the advantages of high specific strength and stress. This study develops a GUI interface to construct the blade model for the stress analysis using ANSYS. With the aid of visualization interface, the geometric model of the blade can be constructed by only a few data inputs. Based on the numerical stress analysis of the turbine blade, a simple iterative method was proposed to design the structure of the composite blade. Keywords Wind turbine blade . Stress analysis . Structural design . Composite blade

1 Introduction Glass fiber or carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites are currently the most popular materials used for the wind turbine blade due to their light weight and superior mechanical properties. A wind turbine blade may sustain various loading during the operation and parking states. Due to the increasing size of the composite wind turbine blade, it is an important issue to arrange the composite materials in a sufficient way to reach the optimal utilization of the material strength. The fiber direction and thickness distribution of the composite are two important design parameters in the turbine blade structure. The outer shape of a wind turbine blade is usually determined by the consideration of aerodynamic efficiency, and is not subjected to change in general. The structure of the

W.-H. Wu : W.-B. Young (*) Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, Republic of China e-mail: youngwb@mail.ncku.edu.tw

248

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

composite blade is composed of the composite skins bonded together with a spar or foam core. The design problem thus becomes the determination of the fiber orientation and thickness distribution on the composite skin. There are many reports that address the design of composite plate with simple geometry. However, limited studies are reported in the structural design of composite with the complex blade geometry. Gigure [1] divided the blade into several sections and determined the stiffness of each section as the basis for material distribution. Tangle [2] pointed out that composite material could be used at the wind turbine blade to efficiently sustain the complex loading for increasing size of blade. Bechly [3] reported an early work on the finite analysis of the composite wind turbine blade. Kong [4] conducted structural design of the composite wind turbine blade under various loads and fatigue life. Jensen [5] tested a full-scale 34 m composite wind turbine blade to failure under flap-wise loading. Ovalization of the load carrying box girder was measured in the full-scale test and simulated in non-linear FE-calculations. Maheri [6] developed an aero-structure code to predict the performance of a horizontal axis wind turbine with adaptive blades. For structural optimization, Veers et al. [7] addresses the issues in design and fabrication of the wind turbine blade. Minimization of the blade weight was the design goal in their study. It was also reported that suitable design of the fiber directions and usage of unidirectional carbon fiber to replace the glass fiber can reduce the total weight of the turbine blade, while maintaining the same strength and stiffness [8]. Optimization of the wind turbine blade structure was reported by Jureczko [9] using the modified genetic algorithm. Berry [10] introduced the fabrication processes of a large size wind turbine blade using mixed glass and carbon fibers to reduce the total weight. Lund [11] designed the laminated multi-material composite shell structure by maximizing the buckling load factor. This study develops a GUI interface to construct the blade model for the stress analysis using ANSYS. With the aid of visualization interface, the geometric model of the blade can be constructed by only a few data inputs. Based on the numerical stress analysis of the turbine blade, a simple iterative method was proposed to determine the thickness distribution of the composite skin of the blade structure. The thickness distribution of the composite skin is selected based on the concept of uniform loading. In other word, with the applied wind loading during the parking state, the turbine blade will be designed to have the same safety factor in each station by applying the failure criterion of the maximum principal stress.

2 Construction of Wind Turbine Blade Model Stress analysis of the wind turbine blade must be conducted in order to determine the stress field for the failure criterion. A program with a graphical user interface based on Matlab is developed to facilitate the construction of the geometric model of the blade. The program will generate the geometry data that can be imported to the ANSYS for following finite element meshing and stress analysis. Figure 1 shows the graphical interface of the program. With the input of airfoil geometry, skin thickness, chord length, pitch angle, distance to the center of each station, the blade geometry can be generated. The mechanical properties of the composite material, including Youngs modulus, Poisson ratio, fiber stacking layers and angles, can also be designated in the interface program. The geometric model can be output as a text file and imported to ANSYS. The final geometry of a sample turbine blade is as shown in Fig. 2.

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

249

Fig. 1 The graphical user interface for constrcuting the blade geometry model

3 Structural Loading The wind turbine blade is subjected to complex loading induced by the incoming wind force and the dynamic force. In some situations, the wind turbine blade may experience extreme wind speed caused by severe weather conditions, such as a hurricane or tornado. The control system of the wind turbine is assumed to be able to pitch the blades in a feathered position (the parking position). The design of blade must be able to withstand the extreme wind speed without damage or failure at this position. This study follows the IEC 614001 wind turbine design/safety standard to have an extreme
Fig. 2 The wind turbine blade model in ANSYS after importing the data generated from the GUI program

250

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

wind speed of 59.2 m/s at the parking state as a design guide for the thickness distribution of the blade structure. Three methods are sued to approximate the wind loading at the extreme wind speed at the parking position. Blade element moment (BEM) theory [12] is able to yield good preliminary predictions of wind load. It provides the necessary means to predict the aerodynamic forces and moments acting on a turbine blade. The blade element moment theory divides the entire blade to several elements and calculates the wind load at each element. Figure 3 shows the cross section of a blade element under loading at the parking position. The blade is subjected to an extreme wind speed, U, and the resulting lift and drag forces are dFL and dFD. The lift and drag forces can be defined as 1 dFL CL rU 2 cdr 2 1

1 dFD CD rU 2 cdr 2

where CL and CD are the lift and drag coefficients, is the air density, c is the cord length of the air foil, and dr is the length of the blade element. The second method is the simulation using FAST. FAST [13] is a structural-response, horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) specific code originally developed by Oregon State University and the University of Utah for the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). It uses the University of Utahs AeroDyn aerodynamic subroutine package for calculating aerodynamic forces. A direct analysis of the flow field around the wind turbine blade was also performed to derive the wind load on the blade using ANSYS CFX. For a given extreme wind speed, the reactive pressure distribution on the blade can be calculated. Figure 4 show the stream lines of the flow field around the blade, where the wind is along the y direction and x-z plane is the rotational plane of the blade. Figures 5 and 6 show the resulting lift and drag force distributions on a 3.5 m long blade calculated by the three methods. The force distributions are similar to each other. The resulting wind loads are higher by using FAST and lower using CFX. The calculation model of FAST and CFX are generally more close to the real case, but requiring more initial

Fig. 3 The cross section of a blade element under loading at the parking position

dFD

dFL

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

251

Fig. 4 The stream lines of the flow field around the blade under a extreme wind speed

data and calculations. The method of BEM is simple and provides the wind load with reasonable accuracy. It will be the most efficient way to calculate the wind load for the stress analysis.

4 Thickness Distribution in Blade Structure In the preliminary design of the thickness distribution for the blade skins, the blade can be simplified into two kinds of cross sections as shown in Fig. 7 [1]. The root part can be simplified as the cylindrical shape and the airfoil of the blade can be simplified as parallel plates. The thickness and chord length of the root are tsH and cH. For the airfoil part with chord length, c, the maximum thickness, t, and blade skin thickness, tsA, the simplified parallel plates will have skin thickness tsA, length 0.4c, and distance between plates, 0.9 t as shown in Fig. 7(b). With the simplified geometry, the moment of inertia of the cross section can be approximated by the following equation. Ir M rtr=2 s p r 3

252 Fig. 5 The lift forces calculated by the BEM, FAST and CFX

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

where M(r) is the applied moment load at each blade element calculated from the wind loads, r is the distance from the center of the blade element to the rotational center, t(r) is the maximum thickness of each blade element, and p(r) is the material strength. If the blade element is designed to be subjected to the stress of the material strength, the

Fig. 6 The drag forces calculated by the BEM, FAST and CFX

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

253

corresponding blade thickness can be determined by Eq. 3. Therefore, the skin thickness can be approximated as tsH IH
H p 8

c3

tsA r

Ir 0:162ct 2

where IH is the moment of inertia for the root section and I(r) is for the sections with airfoil shape. The composite material used in this study is the woven glass fiber reinforced epoxy. The woven fiber composite is considered as an isotropic material that has an ultimate strength, 85 MPa. If a 3.5 m long wind turbine blade is divided into 11 blade elements, the initially estimated thickness distribution by using Eqs. 4 and 5 is listed in Table 1. In order to avoid problems in the fabrication, a constraint is imposed on the thickness distribution that the blade skin has a minimum thickness of 1 mm. The thickness of the spar used in this study is 10 mm. Other constraints caused by the fabrication process and other factors are not considered in the current study. Also, the design is based on the failure criterion of the materials; the deflection of the blade is not constrained during the optimization design. In the current case, the deflection of the blade increases from 140 mm to 160 mm for the initial and optimized designs. The total weight of the initially designed blade is 30.375 kg. Under the load induced by the extreme wind speed (59.5 m/s), the maximum deformation at the tip is 140.2 mm and the corresponding maximum principal stress is shown in Fig. 8. If the failure criterion of the maximum principal stress is employed for the composite blade, the corresponding safety factor for each blade element is also listed in Table 1. For a design goal of safety factor equaling to 2, the elements 2 and 3 are considered to be not safe enough. To determine the thickness distribution of the composite blade skin with efficient material utilization, a simple way is to have about the same safety factor for all the blade elements. In the initial design, the safety factor of elements 2 and 3 is lower than 2, and some elements have the safety factor much larger than this. Therefore, modification of the

Fig. 7 The simplified cross sections for the blade a clindrical shape for the root b parallel plates for the blade

254 Table 1 Initially estimated thickness distribution for blade skin


Baseline Blade element Thickness (mm) Max. principal stress (MPa) Safety factor Total weight 01 9.68 34.5 2.46 30.38 kg 02 5.34 57.1 1.49 03 4.8 49.4 1.72 04 4.72 38.0 2.23 05 4.53 30.6 2.78 06 3.93 30.5 2.79

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

07 3.16 25.8 3.30

08 2.13 23.7 3.58

09 1.13 20.4 4.17

10 1 21.2 4.01

11 1 18.7 4.53

Total deformation 140.2 mm

(a)

(b)
Fig. 8 The maximum principal stress of the initially designed blade a The leading side b the back side

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257 Table 2 The thickness distribution for blade skin after 3 iterations
Baseline Blade element Thickness Max principal stress Factor Total weight=30.38 kg Iteration 1 Blade element Thickness modified MPSa after modified Factor after modified Total weight=28.76 kg Iteration 2 Blade element Thickness modified MPS after modified Factor after modified Total weight=27.94 kg Iteration 3 Blade element Thickness modified MPS after modified Factor after modified Total weight=27.80 kg
a

255

01 9.68 34.5 2.46

02 5.34 57.1 1.49

03 4.8 1.72

04 4.72 2.23

05 4.53 30.6 2.78

06 3.93 30.5 2.79

07 3.16 25.8 3.30

08 2.13 23.7 3.58

09 1.13 20.4 4.17

10 1 21.2 4.01

11 1 18.7 4.53

49.4E 38.0

Deformation 140.2 01 7.87 40.2 2.12 02 7.17 39.9 2.13 03 5.58 42.4 2.00 04 4.22 41.1 2.07 05 3.26 39.6 2.15 06 2.82 2.13 07 1.92 2.26 08 1.19 34.7 2.45 09 1 23.2 3.66 10 1 24.5 3.47 11 1 22.1 3.85

39.9E 37.7

Deformation 151.6 01 7.44 41.8 2.03 02 6.74 41.9 2.03 03 5.57 42.8 1.99 04 4.09 42.2 2.01 05 3.04 41.7 2.04 06 2.65 42.0 2.02 07 1.7 41.0 2.07 08 1 38.2 2.23 09 1 23.8 3.57 10 1 25.3 3.36 11 1 23.0 3.70

Deformation 158.7 01 7.33 42.3 2.01 02 6.65 42.4 2.01 03 5.61 42.6 2.00 04 4.06 42.5 2.00 05 2.98 42.3 2.01 06 2.62 42.4 2.00 07 1.64 41.9 2.03 08 1 38.3 2.22 09 1 23.8 3.57 10 1 25.4 3.35 11 1 23.1 3.69

Deformation 160.0

MPS: maximum principal stress

thickness distribution according to the safety factor value of each element can be constructed based on the following equation. tn1 SFdesign tn SFbaseline 6

Fig. 9 The thickness distributions of the composite balde skin for both the initial and final designs

256 Fig. 10 The distributions of maximum principal stress of the composite balde skin for both the initial and final designs

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

where tn and tn+1 are the original and modified thicknesses of each element, SFdesign is the design goal of the safety factor, and SFbaseline is the safety factor calculated based on the stress analysis. Based on Eq. 6, the final thickness distribution of the blade skin is listed in Table 2 after 3 iterations to have a safety factor 2 for each element. After 3 iterations, the total weight of the blade converges to a value with the accuracy of one decimal. The final design of the blade has a total weight of 27.8 kg and the tip deformation is about 160.0 mm. The thickness distributions of the composite blade skin for both the initial and final design are shown in Fig. 9. The thicknesses of most elements are reduced while those of the elements 2 and 3 are increased to enhance the strength at those areas. The corresponding maximum principal stresses are shown in Fig. 10. A uniform stress loading on the blade can be achieved with the final design. Near the tip of the blade, the stress loading is lower than that at other areas because of the use of higher thickness (the limit thickness constraint) than necessary. In the study, the design safety factor is equal to two. If a higher safety factor is desired, the total weight will increase because of the increase of the composite skin thickness. Based on requirement of the design, the thickness distribution of a composite blade skin can be determined by the simple iterations using Eq. 6. Figure 11 shows the thickness distributions of the composite blade skin for designs with different safety factors. In case a higher safety factor is desired due to other considerations, thicker composite skin is required for the blade structure.

Fig. 11 The thickness distributions of the composite blade skin for designs with different safety factors

Appl Compos Mater (2012) 19:247257

257

5 Conclusions A wind turbine blade geometry constructing interface is developed in the study to facilitate the stress analysis using ANSYS. Three different methods, BEM, FAST, CFX, are employed to estimate the wind load at the extreme wind speed while the blade is at the parking position. The BEM is shown to be an efficient method in calculations of the wind load with certain accuracy. Based on the maximum principal stress failure criterion, the composite blade skin can be determined under a specified safety factor. A uniform stress loading on the blade can be derived with this design methodology.

References
1. Gigure, P., Selig, M.S.: Blade design trade-offs using low-lift airfoils for stall-regulated HAWTs. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (1999) 2. Tangler, J.L.: The evolution of rotor and blade design. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (2000) 3. Bechly, M.E., Clausen, P.D.: Structural design of a composite wind turbine blade using finite element analysis. Comput. Struct. 63, 639646 (1997) 4. Kong, C., Bang, J., Sugiyama, Y.: Structural investigation of composite wind turbine blade considering various load cases and fatigue life. Energy 30, 21012114 (2005) 5. Jensen, F.M., Falzon, B.G., Ankersen, J., Stang, H.: Structural testing and numerical simulation of a 34 m composite wind turbine blade. Compos. Struct. 76, 5261 (2006) 6. Maheri, A., Noroozi, S., Toomer, C.A., Vinney, J.: WTAB, a computer program for predicting the performance of horizontal axis wind turbines with adaptive blades. Renew. Energy 31, 16731685 (2006) 7. Veers, P.S., Ashwill, T.D., Sutherland, H.J., Laird, D.L., Lobitz, D.W., Griffin, D.A., Mandell, J.F., Musial, W.D., Jackson, K., Zuteck, M., Miravete, A., Tsai, S.W., Richmond, J.L.: Trends in the design, manufacture and evaluation of wind turbine blades. Wind Energy 6, 245259 (2003) 8. Locke, J., Valencia, U.: Design studies for twist-coupled wind turbine blades. Wichita State University, National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita, Kansas SAND2004-0522 (2004) 9. Jureczko, M., Pawlak, M., Mezyk, A.: Optimisation of wind turbine blades. J. Mater. Process. Technol. 167, 463471 (2005) 10. Berry, D.S.: CX-100 Manufacturing final project report. TPI Composites, Inc. SAND2007-6065 (2007) 11. Lund, E.: Buckling topology optimization of laminated multi-material composite shell structures. Compos. Struct. 91, 158167 (2009) 12. Manwell, J.F., McGowan, J.G., Rogers, A.L.: Wind Energy Explained. John Wiley & Sons, LTD, (2002) 13. Jonkman, J.M., Jr. M.L.B.: FAST Users Guide (2005)

You might also like