A Numerical Fatigue Model for Application to Tidal Turbines

摘要

In complex composite components it is often necessary to taper the thickness of a laminate. This is done through dropping off plies in the taper direction. Ply drops are a potential source of delamination initiation and subsequent propagation. In tidal turbine blades the ply drops can be quite severe since ply weights are relatively heavy to keep manufacturing costs low and ply drops necessarily occur in the heavily loaded root region. A technique is presented here for assessment of such design features which can take account of both static and fatigue loading though the use of cohesive interface elements in finite element analysis.