Performance Analysis of PLA Material Based Micro-Turbines for Low Wind Speed Applications

Belqasem Aljafari; Devakirubakaran Samithas; Praveen Kumar Balachandran; Sambandam Anandan; Thanikanti Sudhakar Babu

doi:10.3390/polym14194180

Performance Analysis of PLA Material Based Micro-Turbines for Low Wind Speed Applications

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Oct 5;14(19):4180. doi: 10.3390/polym14194180.

Authors

Belqasem Aljafari¹, Devakirubakaran Samithas², Praveen Kumar Balachandran³, Sambandam Anandan⁴, Thanikanti Sudhakar Babu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Najran University, Najran 11001, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, QIS College of Engineering and Technology, Ongole 523272, India.
³ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Vardhaman College of Engineering, Hyderabad 501218, India.
⁴ Nanomaterials & Solar Energy Conversion Lab, Department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli 620015, India.
⁵ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT), Hyderabad 500075, India.

Abstract

Various studies have been conducted in recent years to find solutions to the issues in wind energy conversion systems. A 100W horizontal axis micro wind turbine is built for low wind speed applications in this work. The Blade Element Momentum theory approach was used to design the 100W micro wind turbine blade. The wind turbine blade 3D model was created using the CREO CAD 3.0 software. Based on the aerodynamic studies, the airfoil S9000 is chosen among others for generating high power at low wind speed. The density, Young's modulus, and the Poisson ratio of the proposed wind turbine blade model with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA) materials were compared. ABS and PLA materials were investigated using a 0.33 mm layer of infill ranging from 10% to 100%. PLA and ABS output values were compared in terms of deformation, equivalent stress, and equivalent strain. PLA materials, on the other hand, have less deformation and greater structural properties than ABS materials. The wind blade structural analysis was performed in ANSYS 15 software, and the details of experimental and simulated results are presented in this paper.

Keywords: PLA material; horizontal axis; micro turbine; wind plant.

Grants and funding

The authors are thankful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at Najran University for funding this work under the Research Groups Funding program grant code (NU/RG/SERC/11/6).