Fluid-Structure Interaction Modeling for Fatigue-Damage Prediction in Full-Scale Wind-Turbine Blades

This work presents a collection of advanced computational methods, and their coupling, that enable prediction of fatigue-damage evolution in full-scale composite blades of wind turbines operating at realistic wind and rotor speeds. The numerical methodology involves: (1) a recently developed and validated fatigue-damage model for multilayer fiber-reinforced composites; (2) a validated coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) framework, wherein the 3D time-dependent aerodynamics based on the Navier-Stokes equations of incompressible flows is computed using a finite-element-based arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian-variational multiscale (ALE-VMS) technique, and the blade structures are modeled as rotation-free isogeometric shells; and (3) coupling of the FSI and fatigue-damage models. The coupled FSI and fatigue-damage formulations are deployed on the Micon 13M wind turbine equipped with the Sandia CX-100 blades. Damage initiation, damage progression, and eventual failure of the blades are reported.