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When designing a wind turbine, the main objective is to generate maximum effective power with the lowest possible production costs. The power of a wind turbine depends primarily on the aerodynamic properties of its blades. Moreover, the cost of making a blade for a wind turbine, and therefore also for the entire wind turbine, depends on the materials used for its production. Therefore, wind turbine blades are the most studied element of a wind turbine. By selecting the optimal material and geometric properties of the wind turbine blade, it is possible to reduce the costs of making the entire wind turbine. These rationales led the authors to investigate composite wind turbine blades. A two-criteria optimization task was formulated, which allowed for the simultaneous consideration of two criteria: minimizing the mass and minimizing the vertical deflection of the wind turbine blade. Geometric properties of the blade, influencing the considered criteria, were assumed as decision variables. The weighted sum method was used. The results obtained allowed us to determine the optimal geometric and material properties of a wind turbine blade.

Abstract. The article presents the methods for defining the geometry of the contact surface between a rigid wheel and a rigid rail. The calculation model that has been developed allowed for any arrangement of the wheel in relation to the rail. This allowed for the creation of a system of nonlinear equations, the solution of which allows one to determine the presumable wheel-rail contact points. The search for the solution of the system of strongly nonlinear equations was conducted using a few optimization methods. This allowed one to study both the selection of the starting point and the convergence of the method.

At the beginning of this chapter is a brief introduction to the issue of renewable energy sources. Next, aspects that should be considered when choosing a location of both solar photovoltaics panels and wind turbines are discussed. Afterwards, there is a brief theoretical introduction to the General Morphological Analysis (GMA), followed by practical application of GMA to optimize the structure of hybrid solar-wind system, which is preceded by a description of the adopted design assumptions. At the end of the chapter is a numerical model of a hybrid solar-wind system developed in the MATLAB/Simulink environment and analysis of the results of numerical simulations.

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