A computational framework for coating fatigue analysis of wind turbine blades due to rain erosion

Author's accepted manuscript The rain-induced fatigue damage in the wind turbine blade coating has attracted increasing attention owing to significant repair and maintenance costs. The present paper develops an improved computational framework for analyzing the wind turbine blade coating fatigue induced by rain erosion. The paper first presents an extended stochastic rain field simulation model that considers different raindrop shapes (spherical, flat, and spindle), raindrop sizes, impact angles, and impact speeds. The influence of these raindrop characteristics on the impact stress of the blade coating is investigated by a smoothed particle hydrodynamics approach. To address the expensive …