JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #99 - September 2015 - 39

platform

An internet aid for advances
in wind turbine blade design

By
rani ricHarDson
caTia composiTes business experience consulTanT
DassaulT sysTèmes
r. byron pipes
JoHn bray DisTinguisHeD professor of engineering
purDue universiTy

l

A growing demand for composite blades
By 1970, most wind turbine blades were
made using glass fibre composite materials. Still today, advanced composite
materials dominate the wind turbine blade
market due to their superior fatigue characteristics and stiffness-to-weight ratio,
their unique ability to be fabricated into

complex geometries, and their potential
for aero elastic tailoring. The ability to
tailor the blade to meet specific loading
conditions and other requirements is
among the greatest assets of composites,
but it increases the complexity of the
design process.

turing processes where no commercial or
academic codes exist today. This is often
where "tribal knowledge" on the shop
floor comes in to play to compensate for
this shortcoming. Not only does this delay
the manufacturing process, but the result
may often produce an inferior product.

In order to meet the growing demand for
wind turbine blade production, it is important to move away from designing and
manufacturing wind turbine blades using
"tribal knowledge" and towards Designing
for Manufacturability (DFM) methodologies that ensure the as-built structure
meets the design intent with the required
part performance.

A comprehensive design and
manufacturing toolset

Designing for manufacturability
DFM requires software tools to develop a
"virtual twin" in both manufacturing process and performance. Unfortunately, not
all software tools for composites design,
analysis and manufacturing are at the same
level of maturity. Additionally, many tools
within an end-to-end suite do not communicate with each other seamlessly. There
are also gaps in the design and manufac-

Wind turbine blade manufacturers work
with a supply chain that produces the
actual composites blade. Communication between the OEMs and their supply
chains is often manual and the process is
different for each OEM. Each and every
design change increases cost and reduces
productivity, causing the OEMs to lose
their competitive edge. Using the right
software tools for the DFM process would
be ideal, however, it is unrealistic to think
the OEM or its supply chain could economically assess all of the simulation tools
that are available today. There are simply
too many.
How can wind turbine OEMs evaluate all
the available simulation tools to choose

No99 September 2015 / jec

Feature Wind Energy

n the 1940's, the first wind turbine blade
for power generation was operated at
Grandpa's Knob in Vermont. The electric power produced fed the local utility
company for several months during World
War II. The first turbine blade was made
from steel and failed after several hours of
sporadic use. Researching better materials
for wind turbine use became an obvious
reality. In 1957, Johannes Juul, a Danish
engineer, designed the first wind turbine
blade, which was made using a combination of composites, steel, aluminium and
wood. More importantly, it ran for 11
years without maintenance.

The recovery of energy from renewable sources is a primary goal
today and wind energy provides significant opportunities with only
modest environmental effects. Yet, the very efficiency of wind energy
systems can significantly alter the economics of this approach to
energy harvesting. Advances in design and manufacturing technology
for composite structures will provide the foundation for enhancing
the energy and structural efficiency of wind blades.

composites magazine 39
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #99 - September 2015
