Fatigue life analysis of a wind turbine blade subjected to Davenport loading using the computational Tool ANSYS

Resumo

Most mechanical elements are subjected to periodic loadings so that throughout their lives some fibers
are damaged due to bending cyclic. Even if the stress does not exceed the yield limit, the dynamic characteristic of
loads can cause catastrophic failures. Finite Element programs are excellent tools to obtain important parameters
of fatigue analysis. In this way, ANSYS uses its structural analysis potential to also analyze the phenomenon of
fatigue through the ANSYS Workbench Fatigue Tool module. Firstly, in order to experiment the computational
procedure of fadigue analysis a retangular cantilever beam was investigated. It was submitted to harmonic loading
and modeled with a solid element of 20 nodes, each one with 3 degrees of freedom, Results obtained in numerical

analysis at ANSYS were compared with those obtained in the analytical methodology. The good agreement be-
tween them is an important step to encourage the understanding of the quantification of fatigue life of the verne555

wind turbine blade submitted to a davenport wind load. The blade modelling was done using shell elements of
4-nodes and 6 degrees of freedom per node. The results obtained are presented as expected, which demonstrates
the correct use of the chosen computational tool.