Graded Infill Structure of Wind Turbine Blade Accounting for Internal Stress in Big Area Additive Manufacturing

Conference · Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 UTC 2018

OSTI ID:1479756

Kim, Pum ^[1]; Dreifus, Gregory ^[1]; Beard, Bentley T ^[1]; Glick, Andrew ^[2]; Messing, Andrew K ^[1]; Hassen, Ahmed ^[1]; Lindahl, John ^[1]; Liu, Peng ^[1]; Smith, Tyler ^[1]; Failla, Jordan ^[1]; Post, Brian ^[1]; Bowers, John C. ^[3]; Stephenson, Kenneth ^[4]; Love, Lonnie ^[1]; Kunc, Vlastimil ^[1]

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1. ORNL
2. Xzeres
3. James Madison University
4. University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK)

In additively manufactured (AM) components, infill structure significantly affects the mechanical performance of the final printed part. However, mechanical stress induced by operation loads has been so far neglected for infill patterning. Most slicers currently available in the market provide infill patterns that are uniform in shape and size regardless of the operational loading. We develop a design approach for infill patterns that accounts for the induced stress. This approach differs from topology optimization as it focuses on the porous infill, which allows the external shape of the printed part to remain intact. The proposed approach uses a computational stress analysis to control the distribution of the local density of the infill pattern. We have applied the approach to a wind turbine blade core with infill densities optimized based on the structural loads. The blade core is fabricated in our big area additive manufacturing (BAAM) system. To ensure less warpage and better inter-layer bonding, fast layer deposition is critical in BAAM system. We have optimized the tool path sequences to minimize the deposition time via the solution to the Chinese Postman Problem (CPP). For the application of wind turbine infill, the deposition from the CPP method is twice faster than the deposition from conventional slicing.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE); USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1479756
• Resource Type: Conference paper/presentation
• Conference Information: CAMX 2018 - Dallas, Texas, United States of America - 10/15/2018-10/18/2018
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English