Comparison of numerical modelling techniques for impact investigation on a wind turbine blade

Abstract

Wind turbine blades are exposed to numerous impact risks throughout their lifetimes. The impact risks range from bird collisions during operation to impacts with surrounding structures at the time of transportation and installation. Impact loads on the fibre composite blades can induce several complex, simultaneously interacting and visually undetectable damage modes and have a high potential to reduce the local and global blade sti↵ness. An assessment of such impact-induced damages is therefore necessary and usually involves high computational costs using numerical procedures, especially when analysing large composite components. To minimise this computational expense, di↵erent numerical impact modelling techniques are utilised, primarily shell-element-based approaches and multiscale-modelling-based global-local approaches. In this article, a comparison between (1) pure shell, (2) shellto-solid coupling, and (3) submodelling finite element modelling techniques using Abaqus/Explicit is presented for a case where an impactor hits the leading edge of a blade. A high-fidelity local solid finite element model is developed for the leading edge of a DTU 10 MW blade at the region of impact and its sti↵ness is compared with baseline. A user material subroutine VUMAT for the intralaminar damage mode based on the Hashin failure criterion is formulated and then validated via an experiment from the literature. Finally, based on di↵erent numerical modelling techniques, impact investigations are performed, and the impact responses, damage to the blade and computational analysis durations are compared. It is found that the submodelling-based global-local approach is the most e cient analysis technique for this case, capturing failure modes including delamination, core crushing and local surface indentation in the blade. The findings of this study can be used to develop accurate and computationally e cient tools for modelling impact-induced damage to a blade.

A comprehensive numerical investigation of the impact behaviour of an offshore wind turbine blade due to impact loads during installation

“…The utilised method also has demerits and can influence the results obtained for the impact response and impact resistance. In [26], it was found that shell-element based method overestimates the impact forces, and exhibited a relatively stiffer response compared to solid elements. Additionally, impact modelling of composites based on this technique could not discretely model an important failure mode for a composite sandwich structure, i.e., delamination and debonding of layers.…”

A survey on modeling and control of thruster-assisted position mooring systems

“…If the outcrossing rate is below the safe boundary, the mating operation is considered to a successful alignment; see Figure 2.5. The relative velocity influences the impact velocity, which may damage the guide pin (Verma et al 2018, Verma, Vedvik, Haselbach, Gao & Jiang 2019. There are two sorts of impact damages, i.e., the sideways impact and head-on impact; see Figure 2.6.…”

Effects of Wind-Wave Misalignment on a Wind Turbine Blade Mating Process: Impact Velocities, Blade Root Damages and Structural SafetyAssessment

“…Abaqus/explicit (Hibbitt et al 2016) environment is chosen as the solver environment for impact analysis given that it is suited for non-linear problems involving large rotation, large displacements and complex interaction (Verma et al 2019e). The DTU 10 MW blade, which is based on shell-element is considered for impact assessment.…”