Outline of Assignment

Outline of Assignment

Introduction

The wind energy industry is one of the fastest-growing fibre business reinforced plastics in the world. Production challenges are compounded as a large scale operation as turbines continues to increase at a rapid pace. Blades, among the most complex parts to mould, now exceed 80 m in length and are getting longer. Currently wind turbines generate less than 2% of the total electric energy in the US. In order to meet this goal of energy independence, it is important to produce more efficient turbines which can compete with other forms of energy production systems, and that is why this research is necessary. Therefore, all the issues related to epoxy composite materials in wind turbine blades will be discussed in detail.

History of Wind Turbine Blades

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century engineers and scientists have been working on developing wind turbines that could be competitive with other energy sources in power generation. Modern wind turbines generate power efficiently and reliably in a range between 10kW (small land base wind turbines) to 6 MW (large scale off-shore wind turbines) using innovative drive and control technology. To get more power output, year after year wind turbines tend to grow in size (Agarwal, 2008, 51).

Challenges in the working of Wind Turbine Blades

A main challenge when designing reliable and efficient wind turbine systems is to estimate forces acting on wind turbines and their various mechanical components. The wind turbine rotor with three blades is the most used in large turbine installations. Turbine shaft components include primarily thrust and journal bearings. Wind is a main source of the forces that should be taken into account. In consideration of the foregoing, the effective implementation of off-shore wind turbines requires improved understanding of how various forces affect drive train components (Betz, ...