An efficient vibration control strategy for reliability enhancement of HAWT blade

This paper investigates the safety of the wind turbine blade against excessive deformation. For this purpose, the performance of the blade in the along-wind direction is improved by longitudinal stiffener made of shape memory alloy. The rationale behind the selection of this smart material is due to its ability to offer excellent thermo-mechanical behaviour at low strain. Here, Liang-Roger model is adopted for vibration control, and the super-elastic effects are utilised for blade stiffening. Turbulent wind fields are generated at the hub height using TurbSim and the corresponding loads are evaluated using blade element momentum theory. An efficient switching algorithm is developed along with performance curves that enable the designer to select an optimal mode of heating depending upon the operational scenario. Numerical results presented in this paper clearly demonstrate the performance envelope of the proposed stiffener and its influence on the reliability of the blade.