Reliability-Based Lifetime Fatigue Damage Assessment of Offshore Composite Wind Turbine Blades

Abstract

This paper presents a method for stochastic deterioration modeling and fatigue damage assessment for composite wind turbine blades operating in offshore environments. The fatigue damage of the composite blades is analyzed and assessed based on the estimates for the applied loads along the blade span, stress analysis, fatigue crack evolution, and lifetime probability of fatigue failure. The complex stress states of the blade are mainly caused by the aerodynamic loads generated by corrected blade element momentum theory, gravity loads, and centrifugal loads. The fatigue of the wind turbine blade is then investigated on the basis of the actual fatigue damage propagation process. The stochastic gamma process is introduced to calculate the probability of fatigue failure of the blade for various critical limits, and these results together with lifecycle cost analysis are employed to determine the optimum maintenance strategy. Finally, a numerical example for a National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5-MW wind turbine blade is adopted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method. The numerical results show that the proposed approach can provide a reliable tool for estimating stress states, evaluating fatigue damage, analyzing lifetime fatigue failure probability, and optimizing repair time of the composite wind turbine blade.