For decades, the wind industry has understood that to become a more competitive energy source, turbine yields must increase and cost per kWh must decrease. The path toward higher efficiency has always been to make turbines—and their blades— larger and longer.
The push for ever larger blades demands ever smarter designs and stiffer composite materials to overcome the cubical rule of scale up. Designs for blades, some over 80 meters long, must take edge-wise, axial and other inertial forces into consideration.1 Obviously, weight-saving in all components is a must. As blade lengths increase, carbon fiber-based epoxy resin composites have the potential to provide the required higher mechanical strength while minimizing added weight.
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