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US 9,541,061 B2Granted
Wind turbine blade with viscoelastic damping
AssigneeSiemens Energy, Inc.
InventorsRyan A. Sievers, Justin L. Mullings
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A wind turbine blade (60) damped by viscoelastic material (54, 54A-F) sandwiched between stiffer load-bearing sublayers (52A, 52B, 56A, 56B) in portions of the blade effective to damp oscillations (38) of the blade. The viscoelastic material may be located in one or more of: a forward portion (54A) of the shell, an aft portion (54D) of the shell, pressure and suction side end caps (54B) of an internal spar, internal webbing walls (54C, 54E), and a trailing edge core (54F).
Claims17
A wind turbine blade comprising:
- an airfoil shell comprising a suction side and an opposed pressure side, both sides extending between a leading edge and a trailing edge;
- a viscoelastic sublayer comprising a viscoelastic material integrally sandwiched between first and second load-bearing sublayers in a first portion of the shell, the load-bearing sublayers comprising a material having a modulus of elasticity at least 10 times greater than an average modulus of elasticity of the viscoelastic material,
- further comprising an aft transverse webbing wall of load-bearing material spanning between the pressure and suction sides within an aft 30% of a chord length of the shell;
- and a layer of viscoelastic material integrally sandwiched within the aft transverse webbing wall and oriented transversely to the chord length of the shell, and
- wherein the aft transverse webbing wall encloses an aft chamber between the pressure and suction sides and the trailing edge;
- and further comprising a core in the aft chamber and a further layer of the viscoelastic material in the core oriented transversely to the chord length, wherein the core has a lower density than the load-bearing material.
3 more elements
A wind turbine blade comprising:
- an airfoil shell comprising a pressure side and an opposed suction side, wherein both sides extend between a leading edge and a trailing edge;
- the shell comprising a low density core material sandwiched between higher density exterior and interior load-bearing layers comprising glass fabric reinforcement sheets that are continuous from the trailing edge, over the pressure side, the leading edge, and the suction side, and joined at the trailing edge, the exterior load-bearing layer forming an aerodynamic surface of the airfoil shell;
- and
- wherein a portion of the shell comprises a viscoelastic shear layer comprising a viscoelastic material integrally sandwiched between first and second load-bearing sublayers of at least one of the load-bearing layers, wherein the load-bearing sublayers are made of a material with at least 100 times greater modulus of elasticity than an average modulus of elasticity of the viscoelastic material over a design stress range of the viscoelastic material.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.