Wind energy has emerged as a viable and commercially successful renewable energy source. Renewable energy is an important element in the US strategy for mitigating our dependence on non-domestic oil. The current root specimen design does not show significant mechanical property differences according to process and exceeds all static and fatigue requirements. A comparison of mechanical properties showed no significant differences after employing fiber volume normalization techniques to account for geometry differences resulting from varying fiber volumes. Hand lay-up was consistently slower in fabrication times for the structures investigated. These results would significantly reduce the weight of wind turbine blades. RTM resulted in tighter material transition radii and eliminated the need for most secondary bonding operations. RTM was found to reduce thickness and weight and increase fiber volumes for all substructures. It was found that the manufacturing process played an important role in laminate thickness, fiber volume, and weight for the geometries investigated. The geometries investigated were flat plate, thin and thick flanged T-stiffener, I-beam, and root connection joint.
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Several lay-up schedules and critical turbine blade structures were chosen for comparison of their more » properties resulting from RTM and hand lay-up processing. This report details a comparison of the RTM process to hand lay-up of composite wind turbine blade structures. Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) was identified as a processing alternative and shows promise in addressing the shortcomings of hand lay-up. While there are benefits to the hand lay-up process, drawbacks inherent to this process along with advantages of other techniques suggest that better manufacturing alternatives may be available.
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![pointwise airfoil generator pointwise airfoil generator](https://aerotoolbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/naca-65018-airfoil-e1584880022479.jpg)
The majority of the wind turbine blade industry currently uses low cost hand lay-up manufacturing techniques to process composite blades.