Structural gradient based sizing optimization of wind turbine blades with fixed outer geometry

In this work the mass of a 73.5 m offshore wind turbine blade is minimized while considering manufacturing constraints, tip displacement, buckling, and static strength criteria when subject to an extreme load envelope consisting of 12 load directions. The gradient based sizing optimization takes offset in the outer geometry and loading from a commercial 73.5 m wind turbine blade where the manufacturing mold should be re-used and hence the outer geometry is kept constant. A solid-shell finite element model of the full blade is used as basis for the optimization. The blade is divided into patches and thicknesses of ply-groups (groups of contiguous plies with the same material and fiber orientation) are used as design variables. The design variables are assumed continuous in the optimization phase. Sequential linear programming (SLP) is used to solve the problem with semi-analytical gradients. In the post-processing phase the lay-up is refined and ply-group thicknesses are rounded to a whole number of plies. The gradient based sizing optimization results in a reduced mass and many active constraints across multiple load directions while the post-processing ensures manufacturability.