Aeroelastic Analysis of Composite Wind Turbine Blades

In general, high aspect ratio structures such as wind turbine rotor blades are more likely to get damages from unexpected vibrations. To maintain those structures stably, studies on the reduction of deflections and vibrations should be performed for the design of wind turbine blades. The newly developed wind turbine blade has long blade length resulting in large deformation which requires structural design considering large deflection characteristics. To consider geometric nonlinearities, finite elements based on a large deflection beam theory are used for the structural analysis. No kinematical limitations are imposed on the magnitude of displacements and rotations in the strain-displacement rotations. In this study, aeroelastic characteristics of a large composite wind turbine rotor blade are investigated using Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory and two-dimensional quasisteady strip theory. Analysis results are compared with previously published numerical data. The analysis model reasonably estimated the behaviour of composite wind turbine blades.