Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail-transportable blades – Part 2: 3D finite element design  optimization of the rotor blades

Camarena, Ernesto; Anderson, Evan; Paquette, Josh; Bortolotti, Pietro; Feil, Roland; Johnson, Nick

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-19-2022

Articles | Volume 7, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-19-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-19-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 7, issue 1

Research article

|

19 Jan 2022

Research article |

| 19 Jan 2022

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail-transportable blades – Part 2: 3D finite element design optimization of the rotor blades

Ernesto Camarena, Evan Anderson, Josh Paquette, Pietro Bortolotti, Roland Feil, and Nick Johnson

Model code and software

NuMAD v3.0 (3.0) E. Camarena, E. Anderson, K. Ruehl, R. J. Clarke, J. Paquette, and B. L. Ennis https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5851606

Short summary

The length of rotor blades of land-based wind turbines is currently constrained by logistics. Turbine manufacturers currently propose segmented solutions to overcome these limits, but blade joints come with extra masses and costs. This work investigates an alternative solution, namely the design of ultra-flexible blades that can be transported on rail via controlled bending. The results show that this is a promising pathway to further increasing the size of land-based wind turbines.