Using the petiole of the miriti palm for the core of a small wind turbine blade
I. dos S. Gomes,
J. R. P. Vaz,
D. H. Wood
Abstract:In many small wind turbine blades, the interior space between laminate skins is filled by a material core. The mechanical properties of the core are much less important than its density, which must be low to reduce the moment of inertia as high inertia increases both the starting time of the turbine and the gyroscopic loads on the blades. In this paper, we use, for the first time, the petiole of the miriti palm (PMP) as the core of four small blades, in order to analyze its effect on turbine starting performan… Show more
The Miriti Palm (Mauritia flexuosa) grows abundantly in the Amazon Region of Brazil. The petiole (PMP) that supports the leaves, has a density of about one-half of Balsa wood (BW), which is used in the manufacture of wind turbine blades. A further possible advantage of PMP is that harvesting does not kill the palm tree, in contrast to the harvesting of BW. Because the mechanical properties of PMP have not been measured, we determined the shear and tensile properties of 16 samples of PMP and BW to allow a preliminary assessment of PMP as a possible material for blades. The absolute shear and tensile strengths for BW are higher, but specific properties (normalized by the density) are similar and can favour PMP. Direct substitution of BW by PMP would reduce the weight of a typical large blade by around 2%.
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