Structural design and manufacturing process of a low scale bio-inspired wind turbine blades

A wind turbine blade design inspired by a tree seed called Triplaris Americana is presented. The blade was designed by means of an analysis of the seed's curvature and airfoil along its wingspan; the result is as a non-conventional horizontal axis wind turbine composed of three blades. A computational fluid dynamic simulation was performed in order to estimate the operational loads. The blade's structure was designed by means of composite structural design, resulting in six zones with different laminates of carbon fiber. The balance of the aerodynamic and inertial loads was achieved in order to guarantee a minimum change in blade's geometry to prevent a performance reduction. Finally, a manufacturing simulation by means of vacuum assisted resin infusion was performed. Four injections strategies were proposed with three of them considered successful based on a complete mold filling and the time limit imposed by the polymerization time of the resin.