Fluid–Structure Interaction Modeling for Fatigue Damage Prediction in Full Scale Wind Turbine Blades

Abstract

This work presents a collection of advanced computational methods, and their coupling, that enable prediction of fatiguedamage evolution in fullscale composite blades of wind turbines operating at realistic wind and rotor speeds. The numerical methodology involves: (1) a recently developed and validated fatiguedamage model for multilayer fiberreinforced composites; (2) a validated coupled fluid–structure interaction (FSI) framework, wherein the 3D timedependent aerodynamics based on the Navier–Stokes equations of incompressible flows is computed using a finiteelementbased arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian–variational multiscale (ALE–VMS) technique, and the blade structures are modeled as rotationfree isogeometric shells; and (3) coupling of the FSI and fatiguedamage models. The coupled FSI and fatiguedamage formulations are deployed on the Micon 13M wind turbine equipped with the Sandia CX100 blades. Damage initiation, damage progression, and eventual failure of the blades are reported.