Institute for Wind Energy Systems Research Research Projects
Quasi-static Failure Analysis of Fiber Composites in Wind Turbine Rotor Blades

Quasi-static Failure Analysis of Fiber Composites in Wind Turbine Rotor Blades

Simulationsergebnisse mit dem am IWES entwickelten Tool "MoCA" © IWES / Heloísa Guedes Mendonça
Led by:  Claudio Balzani
E-Mail:  research@iwes.uni-hannover.de
Team:  Heloísa Guedes Mendonça
Year:  2017
Funding:  Internal Project
Duration:  2016-2017

Project Description

A reliable failure analysis of rotor blades requires consideration of physically-based failure criteria for the fiber composite materials involved. In the framework of an internal project, the failure criteria according to Hashin and Puck have been implemented in the postprocessing unit of MoCA (Model Creator and Analyzer), an in-house blade design and analysis tool. In this way the software is able to perform quasi-static failure analyses of the composite parts of a wind turbine rotor blade.

In a layerbased algorithm, the stresses, which are an outcome of a finite element simulation with ANSYS, are evaluated and so-called failure indices are calculated. For the plausibilisation, the DTU 10 MW reference blade was analysed. For this purpose, the extreme loads documented by DTU have been applied in a quasi-static and nonlinear finite element simulation and the resulting stresses were evaluated according to Hashin and Puck. The figure shows the results of the analysis, which have been presented as a conference contribution.