Co-Blade: Software for Analysis and Design of Composite Blades

Analysis and design of composite blades for wind and hydrokinetic turbines

To obtain a comprehensive user’s guide and the most up-to-date information about Co-Blade, please visit: https://code.google.com/p/co-blade/

Overview of Co-Blade:
Co-Blade is an open source software that can be used for the structural analysis and design of composite blades for wind and hydrokinetic turbines. The objective of Co-Blade is to help designers accelerate the preliminary design phase by providing the capabilities to quickly analyze alternative composite layups and to study their effects on composite blade properties, deformations, and material stresses and strains.

In summary, the Co-Blade software contains many features:

•Realistic Modeling of Composite Blades
-nearly arbitrary topology & material properties

•Computation of Structural Properties
-offsets: center-of-mass, tension-center, & shear-center
-inertias: mass & mass moments of inertia
-stiffnesses: axial, bending, & torsional stiffness
-principal axes: inertial, centroidal, & elastic principal axes
-modal analysis: coupled mode shapes & frequencies (via integration w/ BModes)

•Structural Analysis
-nearly arbitrary applied aerodynamic forces & moments
-computation of body forces (centrifugal, weight, & buoyancy)
-computation of load induced blade deflections, lamina-level stresses & strains, & panel buckling stresses

•Optimization of Composite Layup
-For a given external blade shape & design load, Co-Blade can determine an optimal composite layup which minimizes blade mass while simultaneously satisfying constraints on maximum stress, buckling, deflection, & placement of natural frequencies

•Graphical Post-Processing
-A large variety of 2D & 3D visualizations can be created through a graphical user interface to provide instant visual feedback

Collaboration:
If you are interested in becoming a contributor to the Co-Blade project (either through modifying the code, adding new features, validating Co-Blade results, or anything else you are interested in) please feel free to contact me, I am happy to discuss possible collaborations.