Analysis and Tests of Pultruded Blades for Wind Turbine Rotors
- PS Enterprises, Glastonbury, Connecticut
PS Enterprises, Inc. investigated a flexible, downwind, free-yaw, five-blade rotor system employing pultruded blades. A rotor was designed, manufactured and tested in the field. A preliminary design study and proof of concept test were conducted to assess the feasibility of using pultruded blades for wind turbine rotors. A 400 kW turbine was selected for the design study and a scaled 80 kW rotor was fabricated and field tested as a demonstration of the concept. The design studies continued to support the premise that pultruded blades offer the potential for significant reductions in rotor weight and cost. The field test provided experimental performance and loads data that compared well with predictions using the FLEXDYNE aeroelastic analysis. The field test also demonstrated stable yaw behavior and the absence of stall flutter over the wind conditions tested. During the final year of the contract, several studies were conducted by a number of independent consultants to address specific technical issues related to pultruded blades that could impact the commercial viability of turbines using this technology. The issues included performance, tower strikes, yaw stability, stall flutter, fatigue, and costs. While the performance of straight pultruded blades was projected to suffer a penalty of about 13% over fully twisted and tapered blades, the study showed that an aerodynamic fairing over the inner 40% could recover 85% of that loss while still keeping the blade cost well below that of conventional blades. Other results of the study showed that with proper design, rotors using pultruded blades could operate without aeroelastic problems, have acceptable fatigue life, and cost less than half that of rotors employing conventionally manufactured blades.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-99GO10337
- OSTI ID:
- 12142
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/SR-500-25949
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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