• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.154-161
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• 2014

This research presents results of structural designs and evaluations for 3MW Wind Turbine Blade by FEM analysis. After the GFRP model was designed as a baseline model, failure check by Puck's failure criterion and buckling analysis were accomplished to verify safety of wind turbine blade in the critical design load case. Moreover, applicability of two kinds of carbon spar cap model, was studied by comparing total mass, price and tip deflection to the GFRP model. The results showed that the GFRP model had sufficient structural integrity in the critical design load case, and the carbon spar cap model could be a reasonable solution to reduce weights, tip deflections.

• Composites Research
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.207-212
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• 2013

In this study, the thickness optimization for uni-directional (UD) glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminates of the spar cap of composite tidal blades was performed under the tip deflection constrains. The spar cap was composed of GFRP composites and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. The stress distributions in the blade as well as its material costs for the optimized results were additionally investigated. The optimized thickness was obtained by interacting a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm and an ABAQUS software to calculate an objective function. It was confirmed that the thickness of UD GFRP increased with a decrease of the restrained tip deflection when a thickness of UD CFRP laminates was constrained to 9 mm. The weight of the optimized spar-cap increased up to 96.2% while the maximum longitudinal tensile stress decreased up to 24.6%. The thickness of UD GFRP laminates increased with a decrease of the thickness of UD CFRP laminates when the tip deflection was constrained to 126.83 mm. The weight increased up to 40.1%, but the material cost decreased up to 16.97%. Finally, the relationships among the weight, internal tensile stress, and material costs were presented based on the optimized thicknesses of the spar cap.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.66-75
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• 2018

In this paper, a lightweight design of the spar cap of 2MW wind turbine blade was carried out using the ply reduction ratio (PRR) and CFRP with a trade-off study. The spar cap is one of the most critical factor in determining the mechanical performance of the blade. Tsai-Wu and Puck fracture theory were used to determine the fracture. As a result, the CFRP composite material could be lighter in terms of weight by about 30% than GFRP composite material under the same conditions. Based on the analytical results, we derive the optimal value of the laminate thickness of the composite material and present the structural performance improvement and the lightweight design result.