Structural analysis of a wind turbine blade under operational loads

• Autor(a) principal: Cristiano de Castro Vieira
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações do ITA
• Texto Completo: http://www.bd.bibl.ita.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=2860
• topic: Energia éolica; Turbinas eólicas; Pás de rotores; Aerodinâmica; Engenharia mecânica

With an increasing demand of energy and its associated costs, it is mandatory that different sources of energy are researched, providing the market with more efficient and economically feasible power options. An alternative to hydroelectric power, dominant in Brazil and receiving more investments every day, Wind Power is still more expensive than other sources. Then, the need to study the design, to model, and to optimize it, arises. The purpose of this work is to present the development of a computational tool intended to aid the preliminary structural design of a Wind Turbine Blade, given the aerodynamic geometry (as span, profile and chords). As an applied example, a 2 MW turbine glass-fiber blade model and operational loads are automatically (batch driven) generated and analyzed concerning stress and deformation. Some iterations are made and a structural resistant and light weighted geometry is defined.