• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.593-606
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• 2015

This paper presents a novel concept of healing some of the damages in wind turbine blades (WTBs) such as cracks and delamination. This is achieved through an inherent functioning autonomous repairing system. Such wind turbine blades have the benefit of reduced maintenance cost and increased operational period. Previous techniques of developing autonomous healing systems uses hollow glass fibres (HGFs) to deliver repairing fluids to damaged sites. HGFs have been reported with some limitations like, failure to fracture, which undermines their further usage. The self-healing technique described in this paper represents an advancement in the engineering of the delivery mechanism of a self-healing system. It is analogous to the HGF system but without the HGFs, which are replaced by multiple hollow channels created within the composite, inherently in the FRP matrix at fabrication. An in-house fabricated NACA 4412 WTB incorporating this array of network hollow channels was damaged in flexure and then autonomously repaired using the vascular channels. The blade was re-tested under flexure to ascertain the efficiency of the recovered mechanical properties.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2013

An aerodynamic design tool was developed for small wind turbine blades based on the blade element momentum theory. The lift and drag coefficients of blades that are needed for aerodynamic blade design were obtained in real time from the Xfoil program developed at University of Illinois. While running, the developed tool automatically accesses the Xfoil program, runs it with proper aerodynamic and airfoil properties, and finally obtains lift and drag coefficients. The obtained aerodynamic coefficients are then used to find out optimal twist angles and chord lengths of the airfoils. The developed tool was used to design a wind turbine blade using low Reynolds number airfoils, SG6040 and SG6043 to have its maximum power coefficient at a specified tip speed ratio. The performance of the blade was verified by a commercial code well known for its prediction accuracies.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.547-553
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• 2016

This paper presents the effect of a grid system on the performance of a small Savonius wind turbine installed side-by-side. Turbine performance is compared using three different grid systems; tetrahedral grid having a concentrated circular grid around turbine rotors, the tetrahedral grid having a concentrated rectangular grid around turbine rotors and the symmetric grid having a concentrated tetrahedral grid near the turbine rotor blades and a hexahedral grid. The commercial code, SC/Tetra has been used to solve the three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis in the present study. The Savonius turbine rotor has a rotational diameter of 0.226m and an aspect ratio of 1.0. The distance between neighboring rotor tips keeps the same length of the rotor diameter. The variations of pressure and power coefficient are compared with respect to blade rotational angles and rotating frequencies of the turbine blade. Throughout the comparisons of three grid systems, it is noted that the symmetric grid having a concentrated tetrahedral grid near the turbine rotor blades and a hexahedral grid has a stable performance compared to the other ones.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07b
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• pp.1358-1360
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• 2002

This paper presents a modeling and simulation of a utility-connected wind energy conversion system with a link of a rectifier and an inverter. It discusses the maximum power control algorithm for the wind turbine and presents the relationship of wind turbine output, rotor speed, power coefficient, tip-speed ratio and wind speed when the wind turbine is operated under the maximum power control algorithm. The control objective is to extract maximum power from wind and transfer the power to the utility. This is achieved by controlling the pitch angle of the wind turbine blades. Pitch control method is mechanically complicated, but the control performance is better than that of the stall regulation method. The simulation results performed on MATLAB will show the variation of generator's rotor speed, pitch angle, and generator output.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.3347-3352
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• 2007

This paper describes a research for the performance improvement of the straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine. To improve the performance of VAWT, the individual blade pitch control method is adopted. For the wind turbine, CFD analysis is carried out by changing blade pitch angle according to the change of wind speed and wind direction. By this method, capacity and power efficiency of VAWT are obtained according to the wind speed and rotating of rotor, and could predict the overall performance of VAWT. It was manufactured to verify performance of the experimental system that consists of rotor including four blades and base. Furthermore, torque sensor and power generator were installed. Also, active controller which can change the pitch angle of the individual blade according to the wind speed and direction was used.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1033-1038
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• 2003

A wind turbine obtains its power input by converting the force of the wind into a torque (turning force) acting on the rotor blades. The amount of energy which the wind transfers to the rotor depends on the density of the air, the rotor area, and the wind speed. Because it has long term operating life and very complex load condition, the fatigue strength of each component must be considered. In this paper, we calculated the load condition by wind using a combined blade elemental theory and a FEM based analytical approach was use to evaluate the fatigue strength of a Hub of wind turbine. The effect of tensile mean stress was taken into account by the modified Goodman diagram. Using this approaches, we evaluated the fatigue strength of hub and main shaft and improved the design.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.922-929
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• 2014

Wind turbines are in the limelight in the alternative energy industry. However, they face frequent and various problems during operation. We focused on the supervising of the blades of a wind turbine. In this paper, we present the design of a maintenance robot that takes the size of wind turbine blades into consideration, so the general form of the robot is a square with four wires fixed to its vertices and to the nacelle. After the robot is placed near the nacelle, it moves along the blades. We also designed an attitude control algorithm for the robot to maintain its balance. Our control algorithm for the robot consists of roll and pitch attitude controllers and a height controller. Each controller was designed independently and then superposed together. We used simulations to verify our control algorithm.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.6
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• pp.703-712
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• 2017

The composite blades of offshore wind turbines accumulate structural damage such as fatigue cracking due to harsh operation environments during their service time, leading to premature structural failures. This paper investigates various fatigue crack models for reproducing crack development in composite blades and proposes a stochastic approach to predict fatigue crack evolution and to analyse failure probability for the composite blades. Three typical fatigue models for the propagation of fatigue cracks, i.e., Miner model, Paris model and Reifsnider model, are discussed to reproduce the fatigue crack evolution in composite blades subjected to cyclical loadings. The lifetime probability of fatigue failure of the composite blades is estimated by stochastic deterioration modelling such as gamma process. Based on time-dependent reliability analysis and lifecycle cost analysis, an optimised maintenance policy is determined to make the optimal decision for the composite blades during the service time. A numerical example is employed to investigate the effectiveness of predicting fatigue crack growth, estimating the probability of fatigue failure and evaluating an optimal maintenance policy. The results from the numerical study show that the stochastic gamma process together with the proper fatigue models can provide a useful tool for remaining useful life predictions and optimum maintenance strategies of the composite blades of offshore wind turbines.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.179-184
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• 2015

In this study, the flap fatigue test of a 48 m long wind turbine blade was performed for 1 million cycles to evaluate the characteristics of acoustic emission signals generated from fatigue damage of the wind blades. As the number of hits and total energy continued to increase during the first 0.6 million cycles, blade damage was constant. The rise-time result showed that the major aspects of damage were initiation and propagation of matrix cracks. In addition, the signal analysis of each channel showed that the most seriously damaged sections were the joint between the skin and spar, 20 m from the connection, and the spot of actual damage was observable by visual inspection. It turned out that the event source location was related to the change in each channel's total energy. It is expected that these findings will be useful for the optimal design of wind turbine blades.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.59-64
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• 2011

Wind turbine frame will be required to be longer, lighter, more reliable and more consistent. Therefore it is necessary to lose weight of the wind turbine hub. Light-weight Design of a wind turbine is required to be at least 20 years. Therefore, this paper investigates the development for wind turbine rotor hub using design of topology optimization. The model is a pitch regulated wind turbine with three rotor blades where the main frame is made of nodular iron. For optimization, calculating stresses based on displacements and based on these data to carry out a verification of static and fatigue strength carried out. For this verification, two kind of analysis is used. One is static analysis and the other is fatigue analysis. Then the rotor hub of wind turbine frame is optimized using topology method.