The identification of structurally sensitive zones subject to failure in a wind turbine blade using nodal displacement based finite element sub-modeling

The wind turbine blades are complex structures in terms of their geometry and the materials used. They need to be modeled, on the one hand as accurately and precisely as possible, while on the other hand the models should be light enough to be run in a reasonable amount of time using reasonable computational resources. Sub-modeling is a technique used to reduce the domain size of a finite element model to a more manageable size. One of the motivations behind sub-modeling is the capacity to develop highly refined and detailed models, without using increased computational resources, as the refined model domain is small and hence has a smaller number of elements. There are different methods of sub dividing the problem domain into smaller simpler domains, of which the transfer of nodal displacement form one parent model to its child will be used in this study. Furthermore the use of surface to solid sub-models is also discussed.