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Wind turbine technology has seen continuous developments ever since the mankind has been on the lookout for harnessing the wind energy. The modern design analysis tools and the emergence of new materials have enabled the development of the state-of-the-art wind turbines. The main power-producing component in the turbine is none other than the blade itself which has undergone a major design improvement in the recent past. The Present work comprises of re-design of a composite blade of an experimental Horizontal-axis Wind turbine with appropriate structural modifications to reduce its weight and hence improving it efficiency. A load generation code VBLADE was developed in C-language for calculating the design wind loads on turbine blade. An optimized and efficient blade design with spar-rib construction was arrived satisfying the power requirements and structural design criteria through structural optimization by deploying FEA SW satisfying static and buckling design constraints. The optimization resulted in substantial blade weight reduction of 39%.
About the author
Dr. B. Guruprasad working as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Alagappa Chettiar Government College of Engineering and Technology, Karaikudi, Tamilnadu with 18 years of teaching experience with Energy Engineering as a research back ground. He obtained his PhD from Annamalai University and published 50 research papers and 7 patents.
