Modal re‐analysis of rotary wind turbine blades in refinement design

A modal re‐analysis approach is proposed for refinement designs of rotary wind turbine blades on the basis of matrix perturbation methods. The approach entails effects of stress stiffening, spin softening, uncertainty of material properties and structural modifications of blades. Three perturbation methods are used to conduct the re‐analysis approach, including the standard perturbation method and two improvements proposed by H. C. Hu and S. H. Chen, respectively. Numerical results of a typical wind turbine blade indicate that the two improved methods deliver better accuracy than the standard perturbation method in terms of eigenpairs. In application to blade designs, Chen's method is suitable for a multi‐step modal re‐analysis with explicit small parameters and cultivates the first‐order and second‐order perturbations of eigenpairs as well. In contrast, Hu's method is a better choice for a single‐step modal re‐analysis without determining any small parameter explicitly and directly offers approximate eigenpairs instead of somehow tedious perturbation processes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.