Design and Analysis of Horizontal Axis Windmill Turbine Blade

A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills usually were used to mill grain, pump water, or both they often used gristmills, wind pumps, or both. Daniel Halladay was the first to design windmills in New England. The majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity. Wind turbines also include a utility box, which converts the wind energy into electricity and which is located at the base of the tower.

In these days, composite materials are widely used in varieties of Engineering Application due to its superior Mechanical Properties which have high Strength to Weight ratio, high stiffness, high fracture toughness, high Corrosion resistance and low thermal conductivity and many more.

 The wind turbine blade sustains various kinds of loadings during the operation and parking state. Most of the composite blades are made of glass fibers composites while carbon fibers are also employed in recent years.

In this investigation, wind mill turbine blade was modeled using pro-E (creo-5.0) and static analysis was carried out using ANSYS software package. In this investigation four different composite materials were considered namely, carbon/Epoxy, E-Glass/Epoxy, Carbon-Sic/Epoxy and Al-Sic/Epoxy.

The design constraints considered in this investigation were stresses and deformations. The induced stresses and deformations have been compared with the permissible limits of material selected.

Finally a comparison is made among the different composite materials considered in this investigation in terms of stresses, deformations, stiffness and percentage weight saving. From the experimental results it is confirmed that Al-Sic/Epoxy exhibited better results among the other materials.