The structural design of wind turbine blades is a rapidly evolving technology. Finite element (FE) modelling is used extensively by structural designers to assess the behaviour of wind turbine blades under operational and extreme load conditions. This paper develops a method of transferring aerodynamic and inertial loads from the aeroelastic analysis output to the FE model. Once a procedure is developed and verified, case studies are undertaken using an FE model of a 34m blade. Loads are applied using the newly developed method and various FE analysis results compared to the same blade analysed under more traditional load application techniques. The case study clearly demonstrates that the method of applying loads can influence some types of analysis results significantly.
An Algorithm for Preliminary Aeroelastic Analysis of Composite Wind Turbine Blades