Structural Static Analysis of a VAWT Blade under Operational and Extreme Wind Loads

This paper deals with numerical static analysis of a straight symmetrical blade for 3KW VAWT (vertical-axis wind turbine). The calculations were performed in order to predict the maximum stress and displacement levels over the blade structure under various loading cases (.i.e. normal and extreme wind conditions). By using SOLIDWORKS commercial software, a finite element (FE) model of blade, which made up of Aluminum material, was analyzed. The results showed that the blade structure would perform adequately withstand extreme load conditions.