Effect of steady deflections on the aeroelastic stability of a turbine blade

This paper deals with effects of geometric non‐linearities on the aeroelastic stability of a steady‐state deflected blade. Today, wind turbine blades are long and slender structures that can have a considerable steady‐state deflection which affects the dynamic behaviour of the blade. The flapwise blade deflection causes the edgewise blade motion to couple to torsional blade motion and thereby to the aerodynamics through the angle of attack. The analysis shows that in the worst case for this particular blade, the edgewise damping can be decreased by half. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.