QBLADE

Course Description:
QBlade is an open-source, cross-platform wind turbine calculation software; it provides hands-on design and simulation capabilities for HAWT and VAWT rotor design and shows all the fundamental relationships of design concepts and turbine performance easily and intuitively. QBlade also includes extensive post-processing functionality for the rotor and turbine simulations and provides deep insight into all relevant blade and rotor variables. In addition to that, the resulting software is a very flexible and user-friendly platform for wind turbine blade design. This course will cover a complete design of a small wind turbine and full simulation.

Course Outline:
• Turbine definition (rotor blade, turbine control, generator type, losses) • Airfoil Design • Xfoil Analysis using Viscous – Inviscid 2D Panel Method • 360° Polar extrapolation with Flat Plate Extrapolation • Wind turbine blade design and optimisation for horizontal and vertical axis rotors using Steady BEM Simulation • Convert the blade to a 3D printable format • Turbine Design and simulation using Steady BEM Simulation (Computation of rotor and turbine performance) • Structure Blade Design using Euler Beam Modal Analysis • Static Blade Loading using Euler Beam Static Deflection • NREL FAST Simulation using Unsteady BEM & Structural Dynamics • Windfield Generator using Veers Sandia Method Correlated Time Series