Design Optimization Of A Wind Turbine Blade

Abstract

This work focuses on designing a blade of 45 meters in length that produces a power of 1.6 MW. The design of the blade was done using the Blade Element Momentum theory and the Prandtl's tip loss factor was used. The aerodynamic loads and differential power at are tabulated and plotted.The finite element method for analysis of the blade is used. As the chord lengths vary decreasingly along the blade radii in order to use the simple beam theory the breath and height of the blade is considered as a function of the chord length, hence the analysis is done assuming the blade to be a tapered hollow beam. The first few natural frequencies in the axial and transverse direction and mode shapes are calculated and plotted.In order to reduce the weight of the blade designed and increase the power two sets of optimization was done. The design variables are the chord lengths, with objective function as power mass constraints was used. The other optimization was using the mass as objective function and power as the constraint. The chord distribution results are plotted and discussed.