A Study on the Evaluation of Structural Properties of Wind Turbine Blade-Part1
This paper presents the structural model development and verification processes of wind turbine blade. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Phase VI wind turbine which the wind tunnel and structural test data has publicly available is used for the study. The wind turbine assembled by blades, rotor, nacelle and tower. The wind blade connected to rotor. To make the whole turbine structural model, the mass and stiffness properties of all parts should be clear and given. However the wind blade, hub, nacelle, rotor and power generating machinery parts have difficulties to define the material properties because of the composite and assembling nature of that. Nowadays to increase the power generating coefficient and cost efficiency, the highly accurate aerodynamic loading evaluating technique should be developed. The Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) is the emerging new way to evaluate the aerodynamic force on the rotating wind blade. To perform the FSI analysis, the fluid and structural model which are sharing the associated interface topology have to be provided. In this paper, the structural model of blade development and verifying processes have been explained for Part1. In following Part2 paper, the processes of whole turbine system will be discussing.