LAUSR

The purpose of this article is to analyze various wind speed-forecasting methods, select the appropriate method for developing synthetic wind speed for 1-year period at Salem in Tamilnadu state in India, and use it for the structural and fatigue analysis of a small horizontal-axis wind turbine blade made of composite material. Various forecasting models such as Markov chain, Kalman filter, and autoregressive integrated moving average are evaluated, and a long-term wind speed pattern at Salem is developed using Markov chain. This wind pattern is used to create time-varying loads using the blade element momentum on blade sections. Then, the fatigue analysis of the blade is carried out using the stress life approach. The blade is found to have available life of about 20 years and the critical area for fatigue is found on the skin near the root of the blade. Various blade skin materials are also compared for fatigue performance. A cohesive zone model of the adhesively joined root joint is also developed and analyzed for fatigue at the metal–composite joint. Thus, an integrated methodology involving high-fidelity modeling of the blade, wind forecasting, and static and fatigue analysis is developed for horizontal-axis wind turbine blade for locations where historically wind speed measurements are available for short time.