Wind Turbine Blade Testing System Using Base Excitation

Wind turbine designers are working to provide blade designs that allow a turbine connected to the blades or rotor to effectively convert wind into electricity. The blades must also be designed properly to withstand inertial forces, aerodynamic forces, and structural forces to provide a relatively long service life and safe operation. Like all rotating machines, wind turbines are generators of fatigue, and every revolution of their components, including the turbine blades, produces a load or fatigue cycle, with each of these cycles causing a small, finite amount of damage that eventually may lead to fatigue cracks or other failures.