Exploring static strength analysis and layer design of composite wind turbine blade

Sections 1 through 3 explain and evaluate the results of our exploration mentioned in the title, which we believe are of some use to designers. The core of sections 1 and 2 consists of: (1) the laminate model of the finite element analysis software ANSYS is employed to analyse static strength of a wind turbine blade under aerodynamic, centrifugal and gravity forces; (2) self-developed Fortran program has been applied to compute the aerodynamic force based on the momentum and blade element theory. Simulation results, presented in Tables 1 and 2 and Figs. 2 through 7 show preliminarily that: (1) aerodynamic force has the greatest effect on the strength of the blade, while centrifugal force and gravity can be ignored; (2) numerical tests concerning layer direction show that the best direction of fiber is along radial direction and the worst is along circumferential direction; (3) the combination of different layer direction and thickness variation analyses shows that fiber along radial direction with slight cross is better than without cross; (4) the best layer design scheme, obtained through varying the composite material of blade from root to tip gradually from solid to 5mm and then to 3 mm thickness, can obtain the minimum deflection and stress.