A new manufacturing technique developed by Concordia researchers could make small wind turbines lighter, less expensive and easier to produce. Using a process known as 4D printing of composites, Ph.D. candidate Emad Fakhimi and Suong Van Hoa, a professor at the Concordia Center for Composites, created curved blades for vertical-axis wind turbines from flat carbon-fiber composite panels. The study is published in the journal Polymer Composites.

Vertical-axis wind turbines are increasingly used on buildings and in urban settings, but their curved blades are typically made using specialized forming processes that require complex molds. These molds add cost, manufacturing time and weight to the final product.

To address this problem, the researchers developed a new, first-of-its-kind “inverse” design procedure. Rather than starting with a particular layup—the arrangement and orientation of carbon-fiber layers—and observing the resulting shape, they began with the desired blade geometry and worked backward to determine how the layers should be arranged and oriented to produce it.