Author : M. Anjali, C. Tara Sasanka, Ch. Deva Raj and K. Ravindra

The cost of wind turbine is the important criteria to make the wind energy competitive. The manufacturing cost of wind turbine blade is about 15-20% of wind turbine production cost. The expenses of innovations in the design of turbine blades represent the small amount of overall cost of wind turbine production. Small changes in the structural model or the use of suitable composite materials or better techniques of manufacturing will lead to greater profits. When designing a wind turbine, the goal is to attain the highest possible power output under specified atmospheric conditions. From the technical point of view, these depend on the shape of the blade. The change in the shape of the blade changes dynamic and mechanical properties of wind turbine. This paper presents the design, selection and optimization of a turbine blade among four different materials. The blade is modeled by using Pro/E and analyzed by standard FEA software ANSYS for different materials. In order to continuing the efforts for innovation, optimization is performed by using a meta heuristic method Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and the results are satisfactory.

Keywords: Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Energy Cost, Meta heuristic methods, Wind Turbine, Blade Design, Blade Energy Momentum (BEM).