A patch discrete material optimisation method for ply layout of wind turbine blades based on stiffness matrix material interpolation

A patch discrete material optimisation (PDMO) approach is proposed interpolated by stiffness matrix material for wind turbine blade (WTB) ply layout. Unlike the usual methods, the stiffness matrix is applied to replace the constitutive matrix for material interpolation in this research. The elemental stiffness matrix can be derived directly from the finite element analysis (FEA). It is possible to alleviate the programming work by numerically integrating the constitutive matrix. Moreover, the patch strategy may reduce the number of design variables and effectively satisfy the practical design requirements. The numerical example of a thin plate verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the PDMO method. In the case study, a patch optimisation of the ply parameter for a 1.5 MW blade is conducted. Results indicate that the maximum displacement reduction of the optimised blade is from 4.1% to 17.5% compared to the blade displacement of the blade utilising the original ply scheme.