In the wind industry the current trend is towards building larger and larger turbines. This
presents additional structural challenges and requires blade materials that are both lighter
and stiffer than the ones presently used. This study is aimed to aid the work of designing new
wind turbine blades by providing a comparative study of different composite materials. A
coupled Finite-Element-Method (FEM) - Blade Element Momentum (BEM) code was used to simulate
the aerodynamic forces subjected on the blade. For this study the finite element study was
conducted on the Static Structural Workbench of ANSYS as for the geometry of the blade it was
imported from a previous study prepared by Cornell University. Confirmation of the performance
analysis of the chosen wind turbine blade is presented and discussed including the generated
power tip deflection thrust and tangential force for a steady flow of 8m s. A homogenization
method was applied to derive the mechanical properties and ultimate strengths of the
composites. The Tsai-Hill and Hoffman failure criterions were both conducted to the resulting
stresses and shears for each blade composite material structure to determine the presence of
static rupture. A progressive fatigue damage model was conducted to simulate the fatigue
behavior of laminated composite materials an algorithm developed by Shokrieh.
