Blade length
The
Blade length that is given for example in the
Blade database or in the
Information pane of the
Blades part corresponds to the projection of the blade onto the
Pitch axis. Note that this is the blade length at the
beginning
of the simulation (i.e. t = 0), as the blade is generally deformed during a simulation and its length can vary.
The blade length is different from the length of the
Blade reference line for prebent blades. The figure below shows the NREL 5 MW blades with a large in-plane prebending to illustrate the difference between
Blade length and
length of the blade reference line.
In practice, for realistic blades, the difference between the
Blade length
and the
length of the blade reference line is very small. For the
DTU 10 MW blade for example, the difference is about 0.1%.