A two-way coupled fluid structure interaction (FSI) analysis for a realistic wind turbine blade has been successfully demonstrated using ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS CFX software. This analysis couples a sophisticated composite shell finite element model (FEM) model of the blade with an efficient hybrid Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes / Vortex Line Method Computational Fluid Dynamics (RANS/VLM CFD) aerodynamic analysis. The FSI procedure was applied to the analysis of an aerodynamic twist (AT) blade. A simplified isotropic model of the blade structure was used initially to develop the overall FSI procedure, but it was found that a composite shell model was required to get realistic results. The results of the FSI analysis yield bending and induced twist of the blade, and stresses and strains within the blade structure. Steady analyses were performed to compute the deformed shape of the blade under different steady wind loads, and unsteady analyses were performed to study the effects of yaw and unsteady wind gusts. The computed tip deflections and induced twists of the steady FSI analyses compare favorably to ADAMS computations for the same case. The use of the hybrid CFD procedure allows the CFD mesh to be small enough to allow the transient FSI computation to be completed in a reasonable amount of time, typically less than a day on a modest number of processors.
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