Static Fluid Structure Interaction Analysis of Wind Turbine Blade Skin Fabric

Abstract

This study analyzes the fabric skin of a wind turbine blade. The fabric skin is a membrane structure that was analyzed using a static Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) method. For this study the blade of large 5 MW wind turbine was selected. In order to examine the validity of the analysis, a variety of reference data were used. Before conducting static FSI analysis, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis and modal analysis were done. Then interaction analysis was conducted. FSI analysis was done with imported Aerodynamic data that resulted from the CFD analysis. The resulting observations about the membrane structure, inherent tensions, deformation of the final structure, and aerodynamic forces caused by deformation are reported.