Hi Yasir,

I'm not really sure what your problem is. Is the material properties complex or is it the geometry of the blade?

Hi Nilas,

Thank you for your reply, because I have many plies of the material in the blade that makes the simulation complicated, I want to reduce the blade to a beam but keeping the beam attached to the blade shape so that I can consider aerodynamic simulation (Fluid structure interaction),

so my question is how to treat blade as a beam defined by beam stiffnes along the blade (or the beam in this case) or I can say: how to attach blade body to beam in workbench?

Hi Yasir,

Have you seen this paper: 

http://windpower.sandia.gov/asme/AIAA-2003-0870.pdf

It does not provide you with the answer but maybe it guides you in the right direction.

Hi Nilas,

Thank you very much, it's a very usefull paper, but I'm still don't know how to attach the beam line to the blade body, so its more about how to do that in the software than the procedure

Thank you very much!

Hi Aysir,

Ok. I'm sorry, but I also do not see the solution. My best recommendation would be to contact the support. 

I truely hope you find a solution to the problem. 

Best,

Nilas

Hi,

what do you mean by beam attached to the blade? You mean beam same shape as balde?

Is your blade attached to some kind of rotor and some fluid around it?

If you want a beam similar to your balde, in my opinion you have to decide on characteristic property of beam which will have impact on structur-fluid analysis. For example, if natural frequency of the beam is important for structure-fluid interaction, then find the elastic modulus of homogenous beam material which gives same natural frequency of composite rotor blade. it can be done using matching EI values of beam and rotor. Hope this is helpful.

Hi Deepesh,

Thank you very much for your replay, yes exactly as you mentioned. I mean a beam has the same shape of the baled and the blade is attached to a rotor surrounded by air.

As I understand from you, I need to define element type as a beam element. And I would like to ask you if I should mesh the blade as a solid body or shell (what is the difference in this case?) and if it shell, then I need to define the thickness, so does it matter if I assume a certain thickness? Please note I will define the stiffness of the blade at different sections therefore I don’t need to define any material.