Wind blade manufacturers face balancing act

Designing wind turbine blades is about balancing aerodynamic performance and structural integrity, but design and analysis is often disconnected from the blade manufacturing process. Dr Olivier Guillermin, Director of Product and Market Strategy at VISTAGY Inc, believes the firms that implement the most efficient composites engineering processes will lead the wind energy industry, and key to this is a PLM-based engineering environment built around a hub of composites design and manufacturing software.