Composite I-beams have extensive applications in the aerospace industry, construction and light-weight engineering structures. In the utility-scale wind turbine blades, the spar-caps and the shear web compose an I-beam structure which is referred to as the backbone of the blade carrying the majority of the induced aerodynamic loads induced to the blade. To assess the flexural properties of the composite I-beam replicating the spar-caps and the shear web geometry of a utility-scale wind turbine blade, a Matlab code is developed. The code evaluates the flexural and shear stiffnesses of a thin-walled laminated composite I-beam based on the shear-deformable beam theory and predicts the strain and displacement fields of the beam based on the prescribed load and boundary conditions. The developed code enables fast parametric assessments for design and optimization of the structurally critical region of the utility-scale wind turbine bales. The code inputs are the material properties and geometry of the laminated flanges, sandwich web (face sheets and foam core) and adhesive paste between the web and the flanges. The outputs are shear stiffness, flexural stiffness, and strain and displacement fields along the length span of the blade for various boundary conditions.  The code is verified using ABAQUS finite element software and validated using experimental data for flexural bending of a laminated composite I-beam in a three-point bending test configuration.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Mo E. Asl (2017), "A Code for Flexural Analysis of Thin-Walled Composite I-Beams with Sandwich Web and Bond-lines," https://cdmhub.org/resources/1513.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. Composite I-beam
2. Flexural Bending