Developing trend of design and manufacture technology for large-scale wind turbine blade

Abstract

Since twenty-first century, the global wind power industry has been developing rapidly. The trend of the blade growing large-scale is obvious. In order to meet the developing requirements of large-scale blade, new airfoils, materials, design methods and manufacturing processes are shown up. Advantages and disadvantages of current technologies are analyzed in this paper. Combined with the new problems and requirements brought from the blade getting longer, it is found that the large-scale blade has the following developing trends in the aerodynamic design, structure design and manufacture technology. (1) In the aerodynamic design, developing high performance airfoils under high Reynolds number, researching high precision and high efficient aerodynamic analysis methods especially for solving the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of large-scale blade, and constructing multidisciplinary coordination design method will be the key points of aerodynamic design. (2) In the structure design, developing environment-friendly materials with superior performance, studying on the structure optimization design technology of large-scale blade, and building the inverse problem design method will be the mainstreams of structure design. In addition, new types of blade structure for solving different problems have constantly arisen. Modular design and intelligent design, with their advantages in weight loss, transportation and improving the operational reliability, have great potential in application. (3) In the manufacture process, the molding process with high molding quality, high production efficiency, low production cost and low environmental pollution is the developing direction in the future. Integration and automation manufacture technologies, which have great advantages in moulding quality and efficiency, will become the manufacture trends of large-scale blades. At the same time, the manufacture technologies used for thermoplastic composites have great developing potential, and the development of low viscosity thermoplastic resin is very crucial.