Optimization of the skin thickness distribution in the composite wind turbine blade

The wind turbine blade sustains wind loadings during the operation and parking states. Due to the increasing size of the wind turbine blade, it is important to utilize the composite materials in a sufficient way to reach the material strength. Most of the composite blades are made of glass fibers composites while carbon fibers are also employed in recent years. Composite materials have the advantages of high specific strength and stress. This study develops a GUI interface to construct the blade model for the stress analysis using ANSYS. With the aid of visualization interface, the geometric model of the blade can be constructed by only a few data inputs. Based on the numerical stress analysis of the turbine blade, a simple iterative method was proposed to design the structure of the composite blade.