Stress Analysis of Wind Turbine Blades

The process of designing a wind turbine blade for power generation applications involves various complex analysis. Analysis is of iterative in nature which makes it cumbersome and inefficient to understand. A part of the research work entitled in this project is concerned with the material effect and stress behavioural characteristics of a wind turbine blade subjected to cantilever condition. Designing and analysing the behaviour of an anisotropic composite material is one of the most important technologies in the area of propulsion. A numerical study has been carried out to examine the effects of the material on stress behavioural characteristics of a wind turbine blade for a conventional and composite material blade subjected to pressure loads using finite element method. It is observed that the application of pressure loads and boundary conditions have a substantial influence on stress behavioural characteristics of a wind turbine blade on both the materials. To simulate the blade layup and to determine the stress characteristics, ANSYS software with shell 181 elements is taken for reference.