On the determination of the mechanical properties of wind turbine blades: Geometrical aspects of line based algorithms

C. Martín Saravia, Claudio D. Gatti and José M. Ramirez

Renewable Energy, 2017, vol. 105, issue C, 55-65

Abstract: This paper discusses the aspects relating the geometric discretization of anisotropic wind turbine blade cross sections via line elements and the calculation of its mechanical properties. The geometrical reconstruction of the blade is done through an algorithm that reads a table that contains the representation of the aerodynamic profile of the blade as a set of connected line segments. The composite material theoretical background is based on a vector variant of the classical lamination theory embedded into a geometrically exact large deformation-small strain thin-walled beam formulation; transverse shear and out of plane warping effects are considered. The impact of the geometric reconstruction in the accuracy of the mechanical properties is studied using both rectangular and trapezoidal elements. It is found that a proper geometrical reconstruction of the cross section must be ensured to obtain small errors in the mechanical properties. It is shown that line based algorithms can give very accurate results provided the cross section geometry is adequately represented.

Keywords: Wind turbines; Composite materials; Finite elements; Thin-walled beams; Cross section (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116310758
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:105:y:2017:i:c:p:55-65

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2016.12.027

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().