Structural investigation of composite wind turbine blade considering structural collapse in full-scale static tests

This study is concerned with an actual collapse testing under the flap-wise loading for a large full-scale composite wind turbine blade, and a discussion is conducted to assess and evaluate the structural response of the blade during loading and after collapse by correlating experimental findings with numerical model predictions. A videometrics technique is adopted to measure the integral deformation and the local deformation of the wind turbine blade under the flap-wise loading. The measured results show that the displacement of the blade tip is up to 11 m at the ultimate load which is 160% of the extreme design load for the tested blade. A simple method is proposed to identify the exact failure location of the blade based on the deformation data. The thorough analysis results indicate that the aerodynamic shells debonding from the adhesive joints is the initial failure mechanism causing a progressive collapse of the blade structure. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.