License Information

Do I Need a Commercial License?

In general, everyone who is using QBlade in the context of commercial work or a commercial project needs to obtain a commercial license (QBlade-EE). The following table gives an overview of which license can be used for which purpose. If you are interested in aquiring a commercial license for QBlade, dont hesitate to contact us () and we will find a solution that meets your requirements.
 
User Type Purpose / ApplicationAcademic Public License (QBlade-CE)Commercial License (QBlade-EE)
Private Individual Personal, non-commercial, non-profit
School / University Courses, teaching, labs
Student Coursework / thesis / homework
Researcher (at university or equivalent) Non-commercial academic and fully public funded research
Researcher (at university or equivalent) Research in cooperation with industry or involving industry funding
Enterprise / Company / Consultant Software evaluation
Enterprise / Company / Consultant Research or commercial projects
 

What are the differences? QBlade-CE vs. QBlade-EE

FeatureQBlade Community Edition
QBlade Enterprise Edition
License TypeAcademic Public LicenseCommercial License
Commercial Use Allowednoyes
Included software trainingnoyes
Supportuser’s forumdedicated on-demand support
Source Code Avaliabilitypublicclosed
Aero-Hydro-Elastic Modellingyesyes
Wind and Wave Generationyesyes
Graphical User Interfaceyesyes
Text Based Object Import and Exportyesyes
Software in Loop (SIL) Interfaceyesyes
Modal Analysis, Campbell Diagram, Aeroelastic Power Curvenoyes
Higher Order Particle Wake Aerodynamicsnoyes
Multi-Rotor Turbine Designnoyes
Multi-Turbine Windpark Simulationsnoyes
IEC Compliant DLC Preprocessor (61400-1, 61400-2, 61400-3, 61400-2-3)noyes
Command Line Interface & Batch Automationnoyes
Full Parallelization and Optimized Librariesnoyes
Real World Performance~ 1x real time at 20Hz~ 30x real time at 20Hz
 

QBlade Community Edition

QBlade Community Edition (QBlade-CE) is freely distributed under the Academic Public License, with publicly available source code. The usage of QBlade-CE is restricted to non-commercial, or evaluation purposes. The community edition of QBlade contains the full functionality to perform aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulations of wind turbine systems without any limitations. All modules for airfoil design, blade design, turbine design, wind and wave preprocessors and post-processing are available to all non-commercial users. Each of the multi-physics models in QBlade-CE is fully equivalent to the implementation in QBlade-EE. QBlade-CE also serves as an evaluation version for commercial users that are interested in QBlade-EE as a way to test if QBlade works in their professional environment!

QBlade Enterprise Edition

QBlade Enterprise Edition (QBlade-EE) is distributed as closed source, under a commercial license, which can be obtained for which annual or perpetual subscriptions are available and professional user support and training packages are offered. The Enterprise Edition of QBlade includes several essential, practical and timesaving addons and improvements for a production-ready application by commercial users, such as automation, scripting, and dramatically increased performance. All the added and extended functionality serves the purpose to make QBlade-EE a readily applicable and ideal tool for IEC compliant certification calculations and system designs. With QBlade-EE wind turbine design & certification can now be performed in a highly intuitive user interface with unprecedented numerical accuracy and efficiency. Higher accuracy, and lower uncertainty in load predictions translates to more efficient on-point wind turbine, substructure, and controller designs and greatly contributes to overall cost savings. The unprecedented numerical evaluation speed reduces the overall time of design iterations and evaluations and increases productivity.

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