Abaqus2Matlab has been used to support a novel application of Fuzzy Finite Element Model Updating (FFEMU) for the structural health assessment of wind turbine blades, a key structural component of wind turbines and crucial to efficient energy generation. The non-probabilistic FFEMU methods which are used require no assumptions regarding the statistical distribution of uncertain variables. Modal parameters obtained experimentally from a small-scale wind turbine blade were described by fuzzy numbers to model measurement uncertainty. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm was used to minimize the difference between analytical and experimental eigenvalues. A fuzzy objective function is used to determine the interval updating parameter vector which minimizes the deviation between experimental and analytical results and is generated with the use of Abaqus2Matlab for each iteration of PSO. The demonstrated methodology successfully identified the location and amount of an experimental mass located at 70% length of the blade, intended to be in lieu of damage.
Congratulations to the authors from the University of Aberdeen, Lloyd’s Register Foundation Centre for Safety and Reliability Engineering, for their valuable work published at the 10th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2017 and at the Procedia Engineering journal, Elsevier, online version only and soon in press:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705817337104
Very excited for this first non-self citation of Abaqus2Matlab, the new way of postprocessing Abaqus results and accelerating the pace of engineering!