A Comparative Study between GFRP Blade, GFRP Blade with Steel Wire Mesh and GFRP Blade with Aluminum Sheet Metal Reinforcement Based on Modal Analysis Technique

Abstract

Modal analysis is a technique which is used to find natural frequency and mode shape of structure. In wind turbine blade specific weight and specific stiffness ratios must be high so that material selection becomes vital problem. GFRP gives high value of these ratios but some reinforcement of strips of steel wire mesh and aluminum sheet metal in GFRP can improve stiffness of blade without much increase in weight of blade. In this paper three wind blades were manufactured from GFRP, GFRP with steel wire mesh reinforcement and GFRP with Aluminum sheet metal reinforcement and modal analysis was carried out on manufactured blades using finite element analysis (FEA) method by using ANSYS 14.5 software and verification of result by experimental modal analysis by using FFT analyzer. Also we suggest best material for wind turbine rotor blade by comparison based on natural frequencies and weight of blades.