Identification and modeling of sandwich composite for possible structural reuse after over 20 years working as aerodynamic shell

Abstract

This paper focuses on the identification and modeling of a sandwich composite material derived from a decommissioned wind turbine blade for potential structural reuse. The main research question was whether it is possible, based solely on the recovered material, to achieve an identification accurate enough to model the nonlinear response of the shell structure with satisfactory agreement. To address this, material parameters and constitutive laws were identified and validated separately for both the laminate and the foam. Three-point bending tests of sandwich beams were then performed and then simulated based on the previous assumptions and identifications. The comparison showed that the results of numerical analysis can be highly accurate when compared with experimental data. This confirms the validity of proposed methodology for material identification and material models.