Wind turbines deal with significant loads that limit the lifetime of the blades. To aid in this, blades can be designed to be compliant in a manner that reduces the peak loads it experiences. One such approach is to use bend–twist coupling. However, as this paper documents, the behavior of blades with bend–twist coupling can be very sensitive to manufacturing tolerances. Understanding these sensitivities allows for better design and manufacturing practices to be developed.

In this research, a cyclic p–y overlay model for monopiles in sand soils could be developed via comparison of numerical simulations of monopile behaviour: once under monotonic and once under cyclic loading with a defined number of load cycles (utilizing the stiffness degradation method). The new cyclic overlay model gives plausible results and can be applied to any monotonic p–y approach for monopiles in sand.

Wrinkles are production defects of wind turbine blades characterized by fibre waviness through the laminate thickness. Such defects are pointed to as one of the primary sources of premature failure of the blade, which impacts the structure's structural reliability. This work shows a methodology to evaluate the impact of wrinkles on wind turbine blades featuring preliminary results, which present the detrimental effect of small wrinkles on the structural response of the blade.