A Computational Technique for Efficient and Accurate Stress Prediction in a Complex Wind Turbine Model

Stress concentrations are a concern in engineering because of their implications regarding structural integrity. Efficiently and accurately computing the associated stresses is therefore important. Unfortunately it is not always an easy task. This task becomes more challenging when the complex configurations encountered in practice require three-dimensional analysis. Submodeling with finite element analysis is one means available to meet this challenge. With submodeling, a subregion is broken out from the original global region and analyzed separately. This subregion requires boundary conditions taken from the finite element analysis of the global region. Accurately estimating the errors associated with these boundary conditions is critical to controlling them and thereby enabling efficient submodeling.

Since it requires more computational time and leads to convergence issues to analyze a complex model which will be having millions of Degrees of Freedom. It is a smart choice to check the regions of interest where the stress dominance takes place and slice the portion from the global model away from the Stress concentrated regions and analyze the same using Submodeling methodology.