Buckling Analysis of an Ocean Current Turbine Blade

The design of composite structures such as an ocean current turbine blade is a challenging problem due to the importance for pushing the material utilization to the specific limit in order to obtain cost effective and light structures. As a consequence of the minimum material design versus more efficiency strategy, the structures are becoming thin-walled, concludes that buckling problems may be addressed, and in this research work the aim is to obtain buckling analysis of ocean current turbine blades. Buckling analysis of an ocean current turbine blade using FEM (finite element method) is presented here. Through this analysis, buckling shapes of the first four buckling modes of the blade under three different ocean water speeds are computed. Buckling analysis of the blade with the Pre stressed and free vibration mode is also considered in this research. It is concluded that the proposed models with specific material would not fail due to buckling effect. Key words- ocean current turbine blade, buckling analysis, finite element method, composite materials