Flutter Analysis of Piezoelectric Material Based Smart Wind Turbine Blade

Abstract

This paper presents a smart wind turbine blade of piezoelectric material. Based on Theodorsen unsteady aerodynamics and the V-g method, the flutter analysis in frequency domain is carried out for the smart wind turbine blade and the ordinary wind turbine blade. The simulation results demonstrate that the flutter critical velocity, that is, the reduced velocity of the smart wind turbine blade, is obviously much higher than that of the ordinary wind turbine blade. The smart wind turbine blade of piezoelectric material can effectively restrain the flutter of the wind turbine blade, especially for the flap motion. For the torsion motion, the smart wind turbine blade is kept away from the critical flutter. Then, to investigate the influences of different parameters on the flutter of the smart wind turbine blade, the influences of the center of gravity, the frequency ratio and the mass ratio of the blades on the flutter critical velocity of the smart wind turbine blade are researched respectively. The increase of the applied external electrical load of the piezoelectric material can increase the flutter critical velocity of the smart wind turbine blade.