In pursuit of China’s goals for carbon peak and carbon neutrality, wind turbines are continually evolving to achieve a lower levelized cost of energy. The primary technological focus in the wind power industry is on large-scale, lightweight designs for entire turbines to enhance cost competitiveness. However, this advancement has led to an increased risk of blade fractures under extreme operating conditions. This paper addresses this challenging issue by using geometrically exact beam theory to develop a nonlinear simulation model for long, flexible blades. The model accounts for sudden changes in blade properties at the moment of failure, covering both the extensive motions and deformations of the fractured blade. The validation of the proposed model is carried out by comparing the results from power production cases with bladed simulations and further validating the simulations of blade fracture load cases against measurement data. The methodologies and findings presented in this study offer valuable insights for diagnosing faults in wind turbines.

With the trend towards larger and lighter designs of wind turbines, blades are progressively being developed to have longer and more flexible configurations. Under standstill conditions, the separated flow induced by a wide range of incident flow angles can cause complex aerodynamic elastic phenomena on blades. However, classical momentum blade element theory methods show limited applicability at high angles of attack, leading to significant inaccuracies in wind turbine performance prediction. In this paper, the geometrically accurate beam theory and high-fidelity CFD method are combined to establish a bidirectional fluid–structure coupling model, which can be used for the prediction of the aeroelastic response of wind turbine blades and the analysis of fluid–structure coupling. Aeroelastic calculations are carried out for a single blade under different working conditions to analyze the influence of turbulence, gravity and other parameters on the aeroelastic response of the blade. The results show that the dominant frequency of the vibration deformation response in the edgewise direction is always the same as the first-order edgewise frequency of the blade when the incoming flow condition is changed. The loading of gravity will make the aeroelastic destabilization of the blade more significant, which indicates that the influence of gravity should be taken into account in the design of the aeroelasticity of the wind turbine. Increasing the turbulence intensity will change the dominant frequency of the vibration response in the edgewise direction, and at the same time, it will be beneficial to the stabilization of the aeroelasticity response.