DESIGN OF THE BLADE BASE OF FIBER COMPOSITE ROTORS FOR WIND TURBINES

Fibre composite materials (FCM) offer a range of advantages for the development of rotor blades for large wind turbines. In the long term a technically and economically acceptable design must be found for the mass production of such rotor blades in order for them to withstand the high, complex cyclic loads during the lifetime of the turbine. In addition there are problems like the limited knowledge of climatic effects on the long term properties of the fibre composite material that make the design of the blade bases especially difficult. Using a certain group of loads for GRP rotor blades, a concept using prestressed bolts for the design of the blade base area is evaluated in comparison to other possible solutions.