An Equivalent Method of Surface Load on Wind Turbine Blades to Characterize Fluid–Structure Interaction Effects

Wind turbine blades, as a fundamental component of the wind power generation system, will interact with the flow field throughout operation. This interaction will substantially influence their aerodynamic performance and structural response. This paper establishes a computational fluid dynamics and dynamic finite element analysis (CFD-DFEA) model to address the issue of inaccurate simulation results due to model simplification in prior fluid–structure interaction (FSI) research. This model comprehensively accounts for the actual ply structure of the blade. Simultaneously, to mitigate the high computational expense of two-way FSI simulations for wind turbine blades, an innovative equivalent approach is proposed for determining blade surface pressure while integrating two-way FSI effects. This method introduces a coupling coefficient [Formula: see text] to adjust the blade pressure coefficient [Formula: see text] derived from basic CFD simulations, which is adjusted to effectively represent the blade surface pressure distribution while accounting for the FSI effect, enabling accurate calculation of the blade surface pressure. Comparing the power output and load of wind turbine blades under CFD simulation, two-way FSI simulation, and empirical testing reveals that the model can precisely simulate the blade dynamics. It can accurately reflect the blade’s actual operation inside the flow field and precisely forecast aerodynamic loads. The proposed equivalent method can improve computation efficiency by 3.15 times while maintaining the simulation accuracy, providing a more cost-effective and efficient alternative for the load calculation of wind turbine blades.