Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Experimental investigation on AW 106 Epoxy/E-Glass fiber/nano clay

composite for wind turbine blade
K. Ansal Muhammed a, C. Ramesh Kannan a, B. Stalin b,⇑, M. Ravichandran c
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore, India
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Anna University, Regional Campus Madurai, Madurai 625 019, India
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering, K. Ramakrishnan College of Engineering, Trichy 621 112, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In a wind turbine, blades take vital role. Performance of wind turbine can vary depending on the material
Received 18 April 2019 selected for fabricating the blades. Composites are the mostly preferring material for the manufacturing
Accepted 30 April 2019 of blades due to provide various properties favoring higher efficiency than other materials. This paper
Available online xxxx
investigates the feasibility of nano composite for application of wind turbine blade. It is fabricated by
hand lay-up method to adding various percentages of montmorillonite nano clay into AW 106 Epoxy/
Keywords: E-Glass fiber composite. And a detailed comparison is made after conducting tensile and hardness tests.
Composite
The experimental results validated with ANSYS analysis.
Nano clay
Epoxy
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Glass fiber Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Recent
Wind turbine blade Trends in Nanomaterials for Energy, Environmental and Engineering Applications.
ANSYS

1. Introduction tors are to be considered with at most importance. Aerodynamic

Due to the continuous consumption, the non-renewable fossil
fuel sources almost going to end all around the world. The develop-
ments in the renewable energy harvesting technologies can con-
siderably reduce the fossil fuel consumption. The European
Union plans to meet one by a fifth of its energy requirements from
various renewable energy sources by 2020 [1]. India, as a largely
populated country should follow the same strategy to avoid the
scarcity of fossil fuels which will be a serious issue in the nearby
future. Solar energy, wind energy, energy from small hydro pro-
jects, biogas, etc. are some of the commonly available renewable
energy forms in India. Among these, 68% of the total is wind energy
[2]. This indicates the great feasibility of wind energy harvesting
projects in India. The improvements in the technologies made this
possible. There are numerous possibilities for the damage of wind
turbines. Among these, 55.9% of the damages are caused by
mechanical breakdowns. This is a serious issue, researchers should
address. The reduction in mechanical breakdowns will improve the
life of wind turbines and thus more quantity of energy can be cap-
tured. Also this will reduce the cost of maintenance or the cost of
replacements. While designing a wind turbine blade, certain fac-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: stalin1312@gmail.com (B. Stalin).
shape, structural configuration and the material selection, etc. This
paper deals with the fabrication of a novel material, particularly for
wind turbine blade and its comparison with the materials present
in use. On analyzing the history of the wind turbine developments,
the material opted for the initial wind turbine blades were steel.
But due to the frequent failures, researchers started replacing the
material of the wind turbine blades by aiming long life and the
maintenance free running. Jhannes Juul, a scientist from Denmark
developed Gedser turbine that showed good performance for
almost 10 years without any maintenance. The successful story
of the Gedser turbine inspired the researchers to explore the pos-
sibilities of integrating composite materials into the wind turbine
blade fabrication [3].
For the uninterrupted performance of the wind turbine the
blades should be capable enough to withstand both flapwise and
edgewise bendings [4]. This is essential for minimizing the blade
deformations and for keeping the aerodynamic shape as designed.
The fatigue effect caused by the gravity load and the wind load has
to be suppressed [5]. In general the major requirements of a wind
turbine blade are very high strength, fatigue resistance and the
stiffness. In this regard composite materials are the apt choice for
the fabrication of the wind turbine blade. Composite materials
are category of materials prepared by combining at least two mate-
rials with fundamentally extraordinary chemical or physical prop-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.04.221
2214-7853/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Recent Trends in Nanomaterials for Energy, Environmental and Engineering
Applications.

Please cite this article as: K. A. Muhammed, C. R. Kannan, B. Stalin et al., Experimental investigation on AW 106 Epoxy/E-Glass fiber/nano clay composite
for wind turbine blade, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.04.221
2 K.A. Muhammed et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

erties. The resulting composite will have very unique behavior that
will be usually a blend of the good characteristics of the individual
constituent materials. Glass fibers based epoxy matrix composites
are the traditional composites using for wind turbine blades [5].
This paper mainly deals with the experimental investigation on
AW 106 Epoxy/ E-Glass Fiber/ Nano clay composite. The major
objectives of this research are to fabricate and analyze a novel nano
composite specifically fabricated for wind turbine blade
applications.
2. Research methodology
A three stage research methodology is followed for the conduct
of this research. The glass fiber reinforced composite material is
fabricated and tested in the first stage. A suitable nano material
is selected and the corresponding nano- glass fiber is further fabri-
cated and tested. As the last step a detailed comparison is made
between the ordinary composite and the nano composite for trac-
ing the improvements if any. ANSYS analysis is done for validating
the results.
3. Experimentation
3.1. Specimen preparation
The specimen material for the investigation in this paper is
glass fiber reinforced composite. Due to the attractive characteris-
tics, the nano material opted for this research is Montmorillonite
[6]. The major ingredients of the composite are given in the
Table 1.
The fabrication of normal glass fiber composite and nano com-
posite specimen is done with the hand lay-up method. There are so
many other fabrication methods widely used by various research-
ers. Vacuum fusion, filament winding, etc. are examples. Hand
lay-up method is popular for fabricating small and medium sized
composite at very low cost [7]. In this method a container is
cleaned and coated with wax for avoiding the sticking with the
resulting composite. An initial layer is made with epoxy and the
Table 1
Major ingredients of composite material.
Material Type
Matrix AW 106 Epoxy Resin
Nano material Montmorillonite
Hardener HV 953
Reinforcement E Glass Fiber
Releasing agent Polythene Sheets
hardener. At the next layer the E-glass fiber is added as the rein-
forcing constituent with a maximum thickness of 4 mm. Rolling
is done in a particular interval to eliminate the presence of voids
which will alter the real character of the resulting composite. This
process is repeated until the required dimension is obtained. The
layered composite is further exposed in the sunlight for period of
type for the setting of the composite. For the fabrication of nano
composite, nano–particles added to the epoxy and the same proce-
dure is followed. With the hand layup method four categories of
specimen were fabricated. This includes pure glass reinforced com-
posite, glass reinforced composite with 1% Montmorillonite, glass
reinforced composite with 2% Montmorillonite, glass reinforced
composite with 3% Montmorillonite [8,9]. Properties through vari-
ous tests are essential. Tension, compression and shear tests are
generally used for this kind of requirements [10]. In most of the
researches, fiber-reinforced polymers are analyzed based on the
properties from tensile testing [11]. The fabricated specimen is fur-
ther prepared for conducting tensile test, hardness test, micro
structural analysis etc. The tensile test is performed in a computer-
ized UTM (Universal Testing Machine) with a maximum capacity
of 10 kN. The specimen is made into a dumbbell shape as per the
ASTM standard. The dimensions in the middle and the end portion
of the specimen are 9.75  1.25  4 and 3.2  1.8  4 respectively.
Maximum load, Maximum tensile stress, elongation at break, ten-
sile stress at break etc. were noted. Rockwell hardness test, and
shore durometer were used to find the hardness of fabricated spec-
imen. Scanning electron microscope images of all kinds of speci-
men were taken to understand the facts behind material behaviors.
4. Results and analysis
Each experiment carried out three times and average values
were taken for more valid results. Table 2 shows the tensile test
results.
From the results of tensile test, it is clear that composite with 1%
Montmorillonite possesses the maximum tensile stress. This is
4.4% higher than composite with 0% Montmorillonite. A Further
increase in the percentage of nano material causes the reduction
of tensile stress. Table 3 indicates the test results from Rockwell
Hardness and shore durometer.
The results clearly point out the linear relationship between the
percentage of nano clay and the hardness. Excess hardness will
make the material more brittle. This is not feasible for the wind
blades as it will increase the chance of failure. From Tables 2 and
3, composite with 1% Montmorillonite is possessing optimum
hardness and maximum tensile stress, which makes it best among
the fabricated specimen. The microscopic images obtained from
the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) also substantiate the

Table 2
Tensile test results.

Specimen Maximum load (N) Maximum tensile stress (MPa) Elongation at break (%) Tensile stress at break (MPa)
Composite with 0% Montmorillonite 1951.945 62.523 10.587 58.116
Composite with 1% Montmorillonite 2030.575 66.962 32.394 59.039
Composite with 2% Montmorillonite 1952.107 63.137 26.076 47.977
Composite with 3% Montmorillonite 1502.86 46.256 21.761 39.532

Table 3
Hardness test results from the Rockwell hardness test and shore durometer reading.

Specimen Load (kN) Diameter of the indenter(mm) Rockwell Number Durometer Reading
Composite with 0% Montmorillonite 100 2.5 43 61
Composite with 1% Montmorillonite 100 2.5 115 63
Composite with 2% Montmorillonite 100 2.5 125 67
Composite with 3% Montmorillonite 100 2.5 127 68

Please cite this article as: K. A. Muhammed, C. R. Kannan, B. Stalin et al., Experimental investigation on AW 106 Epoxy/E-Glass fiber/nano clay composite
for wind turbine blade, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.04.221
 K.A. Muhammed et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx 3

Fig. 1. SEM images (a) composite with 0% Montmorillonite; and (b) composite with 1% Montmorillonite.

Increase in the percentage of nano clay results assemblage and it

negatively affects the homogeneity in the distribution.
The wind turbine blade performance against the failure condi-
tion is simulated in the ANSYS 15 software for ensuring the suit-
ability of the composite fabricated with 1% Montmorillonite.
Various researchers have already adopted ANSYS for simulation
of wind turbine blades [12,13]. In this research work, the wind tur-
bine blade is modeled in Solid works and imported to ANSYS for
the analysis [14,15]. The blade is analyzed under constant area
with neck end fixed [16]. Table 4 shows the numerical values
obtained from ANSYS analysis. Figs. 2 and 3 represents the result
under flap load conditions, and the results obtained under edge
load conditions are depicted in Figs. 4 and 5.

Fig. 2. Composite with 0% Montmorillonite under the flap loading condition.

Table 4
Maximum stress at which composite fails.

Load condition Maximum stress at which Maximum stress at which

composite with 0% nano composite with 1% nano
material fails (N/m2) material fails (N/m2)
Flap loading 81509.7 691,556
Edge Loading 85581.8 94,229

Fig. 3. Composite with 1% Montmorillonite under the flap loading condition.

suitability of composite with 1% Montmorillonite for the area of

investigation. The results obtained are included in Fig. 1a and b.
SEM images reveal that the uniform distribution of the nano
materials bonds the other components of the composite very
strongly and this is the prime fact behind the higher tensile stress. Fig. 4. Composite with 0% Montmorillonite under the edge loading condition.

Please cite this article as: K. A. Muhammed, C. R. Kannan, B. Stalin et al., Experimental investigation on AW 106 Epoxy/E-Glass fiber/nano clay composite
for wind turbine blade, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.04.221
4 K.A. Muhammed et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 5. Composite with 1% Montmorillonite under the edge loading condition.
5. Conclusions
In this investigation, four categories of composites by varying
the percentage of Montmorillonite are fabricated using hand layup
method and tested. From the test results, the composite with 1%
Montmorillonite showed higher tensile stress and optimum
hardness. This proves that, composite with 1% Montmorillonite is
Please cite this article as: K. A. Muhammed, C. R. Kannan, B. Stalin et al., Experimental investigation on AW 106 Epoxy/E-Glass fiber/nano clay composite
for wind turbine blade, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.04.221
suitable for the wind turbine blade applications. The SEM images
and the ANSYS analysis evident the derived conclusions.
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