Parametric Study of Accidental Impacts on an Offshore Wind Turbine Composite Blade

Wind turbine blades are the key components that allow the extraction of energy from the wind; these blades are often subjected to accidental impacts which usually occurs on moving blades with maintenance tools, hail, or flying birds, resulting in a significant degradation of the structural integrity of the blade. In this paper, a numerical simulation is adopted using finite element method (FEM) with ABAQUS software to investigate the mechanical behavior of a GRP composite wind turbine blade under low-velocity impact in operating conditions. On the other hand, damage modeling was formulated based on Hashin criteria for intra-laminar damage to detect failure modes in large wind turbine blade, the sensitive zones, and the size of damaged areas. To investigate this situation, a comparative evaluation was carried out considering many impact scenarios and the main parameters such as the impactor geometry, velocity, and weight. The results are then examined and analyzed, which show that major damage appeared at the tip of the blade and on trailing edge. Furthermore, the impactor geometry affects the type of damage, the weight affects the size of the damaged area, while the impact velocity influences the mechanical response of the composite wind turbine blade. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG part of Springer Nature.