Design And Material Optimization Of Wind Turbine Blade

Abstract

Wind turbine is a device which converts kinetic energy from the wind into electrical power. Wind turbines generate electricity through asynchronous machines that are directly connected with the electricity grid. Composite wind turbine blades have high strain energy because it has less Young’s modulus and density compared to Aluminum turbine blade. Due to light weight and non-corrosiveness in nature the life and durability is high.

A Composite material is made by combining two or more dissimilar materials. They are combined in such a way that the resulting composite passes superior properties which are not available with single constituted material. Composite material plays an important role in automobile industry, aerospace application because of its exotic properties like high strength, erosive resistance and light weight.

The goal of this project is to develop the geometry of the wind turbine blade, to improve the capacity, strength and to reduce weight. Initially literature survey and data collection has been done to understand the problem rectification methodology and selection of material. 3D model has been prepared using CMM points collected from NACA specifications. Different types of geometry’s are implemented on the same and exported to Ansys for further study. A structural analysis is done on various geometric profiles of blade segment @200 Kmph and 400 Kmph (double velocity) for the validation. It is observed that the deflections of composite turbine blade are greater and stresses are less as compared to aluminum turbine blade for the same loading conditions. A 15% reduction in weight can be obtained by replacing an aluminum turbine blade with a composite turbine blade.