System reliability effects in wind turbine blades

摘要

Laminated composite sandwich panels have a layered structure, where individual layers have randomly varying stiffness and strength properties. The presence of multiple failure modes and load redistribution following partial failures are the reason for laminated composites to exhibit system behavior from reliability point of view. The present paper discusses the specifics of system reliability behavior of laminated composite sandwich panels, and solves an example system reliability problem for a glass fiber-reinforced composite sandwich structure subjected to in-plane compression.