P1: Renewable Wind Turbine Blade
Project Overview:
In order to aid the nation of Sweden in achieving their overall environmental goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2045, our team was tasked with researching, designing, and testing a concept for a new wind turbine blade that had the following attributes:
- Environmentally sustainable wind turbine blade
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- Ideal material selection to ensure an efficient and clean design
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- Strong design that has a deflection constraint of no more than 10 milimetres
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- Simple and effective design that can be easily implemented into Sweden's current wind farms.
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Objectives:
1) Minimal Tip Deflection:
The turbine blade and structure had to be strong in order to resist deflection (<10mm) and harness the most amount of energy possible by reducing mechanical vibrations that play a factor in decreasing efficiency.
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2) Eco Friendly
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The turbine blade must be eco-friendly created out of material with a low carbon footprint and one that is ideally recyclable as many wind turbine blades end up in land fills creating unnecessary waste.
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3) Longevity:
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The wind turbine blade must last many years to reduce cost as well as continue to operate with minimal maintenance ensuring the material selected is durable and stable.
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To achieve these objectives, our team came up with a unique design that emphasizes efficiency, durability, and is eco-friendly.
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Additionally, our team selected the material for the wind turbine blade by utilizing Ashby Charts to determine the most durable materials and the materials which were the most eco-friendly
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Variable length wind turbine blade concept
MPI Used for ideal carbon footprint
Skills:
Use of Autodesk Inventor to create and simulate a realistic CAD model of the wind turbine blade and evaluate the strength, stiffness and deflection of the blade
Use of MPI's, Ashby charts, and source material databases through Ansys Granta software to aid in selecting the most optimal material for the given scenario
With the use of the above technical skills and other soft skills such as the use of a weighted decision matrix and collaborative team work, the ideal wind turbine blade design could be optimized and applied to the given scenario.
Granta EduPack Ashby Chart used to plot MPI and select material
Autodesk Inventor Deflection Simulation used to assess and alter the thickness of the blade
Reflection:
As subject matter expert in this project, in which I was responsible for collecting research, gathering source database information, and taking lead in the material selection portion as well as participating in other aspects such as 3D modelling, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of engineering concepts and material selection. I was able to specifically learn how to utilize MPI's, decision matrices, and software such as Ansys Granta to aid in selecting the ideal material for a wind turbine blade, and applying it to our scenario specific wind turbine blade design by utilizing Autodesk Inventor to run deflection simulations. Overall, this project imparted to me a strong foundation in attributes such as CAD, MPI selection, design specifics, and teamwork. In reviewing the project after completion, there are many aspects such as objective, constraint, and function identification, design conceptualization, and utilization of software that could have been improved and will be taken into consideration in future projects.