Optimal Design for a Composite Wind Turbine Blade With Fatigue and Failure Constraints

Abstract

The search for more efficient and sustainable renewable energies is rapidly growing. Throughout the years, wind turbines matured towards a lowered cost-of-energy and have grown in rotor size therefore stretched the role of composite materials that offered the solution to more flexible, lighter and stronger blades. The objective of this paper is to present an improved version of the preliminary optimization tool called CoBlade, which will offer designers and engineers an accelerated design phase by providing the capabilities to rapidly evaluate alternative composite layups and study their effects on static failure and fatigue of wind turbine blades. In this study, the optimization formulations include non-linear failure constraints. In addition a comparison between 3 formulations is made to show the importance of choosing the blade mass as the main objective function and the inclusion of failure constraints in the wind turbine blade design.Keywords: wind turbine, blade, optimization, failure, Co-Blade. CONCEPTION OPTIMALE D'UNE PALE D'ÉOLIENNE EN MATÉRIAUX COMPOSITES AVEC DES CONTRAINTES DE FATIGUE ET DE RUPTURE RÉSUMÉLa recherche pour des énergies renouvelables plus efficaces et durables est en forte croissance. Au fil des années, les éoliennes ont acquis de la maturité avec un coût plus réduit et des tailles de rotor plus grandes élargissant ainsi l'utilisation des matériaux composites qui offrent plus de flexibilité, plus de légèreté et plus de solidité. L'objectif de cet article est de proposer une version améliorée du logiciel d'optimisation préli-minaire Co-Blade, qui permettra aux concepteurs d'accélérer la phase de conception des pales d'éolienne en matériaux composites grâce à des outils d'études de diverses configuration des laminés composites et de leur comportements en rupture et en fatigue. Dans cette étude, les formules d'optimisation tiennent compte des contraintes de ruptures non linéaires. Additionnellement, une comparaison de 3 formules d'optimisation a été effectuée afin de mettre en évidence l'importance du choix de la masse tel que fonction objective principale et de la considération des contraintes de rupture dans la conception des pales d'éoliennes.

Wind Turbine Design: Multi‐Objective Optimization

“…Finally, we showed the steps to solve a classic multi-objective wind turbine design problem using a genetic algorithm. The reader is referred to the following publications for further details [2,55] concerning wind turbine optimization.…”

Structural Optimization of Wind Turbine Blades for Improved Dynamic Performance

“…For a specified design load, the objective of the structural optimization was to minimize the blade's mass while satisfying constraints on maximum allowable stress, blade tip deflection, buckling, and placement of blade natural frequencies. Adam Chehouri et al [13] presented an improved version of the preliminary optimization tool called CoBlade, which offers designers and engineers an accelerated design phase by providing the capabilities to rapidly evaluate alternative composite layups and study their effects on static failure and fatigue of wind turbine blades. In this study, the optimization formulations included nonlinear failure constraints, and a comparison between three formulations was made to show the importance of choosing the blade mass as the main objective function and the inclusion of failure constraints in the wind turbine blade design.…”