Forum
Important Notice for New User Registrations
To combat an increasing number of spam and bot registrations, we now manually approve all new user registrations. While this may cause a delay until your account is approved, this step is essential to ensure the quality and security of this forum.
To help us verify your registration as legitimate, please use a clear name as user name or an official email address (such as a work, university, or similar address). If you’re concerned that we may not recognize your registration as non-spam, feel free to email us at with a request to approve your username.
Misunderstood about the components' terms
Hi David,
I was working on some structural simulation, and I encountered the blade’s structure definition. I am not sure whether the term “spar” in your software is shear web and if it is this blade wouldn’t have the spar cap right?
I am new to this blade design, and I am hoping that excluding the spar cap from the simulation will not affect the results significantly and the total weight of the blade.
Thank you in advance! Looking forward to your response. Have a great day.
Warm regards,
Toan Nguyen
Hello Toan,
I assume that your question relates to the functionality of QBlade’s QFEM module.
QFEM only provides very basic features for cross-sectional blade modelling – namely the definition of a single spar via its width, angle, and position. More advanced structural features such as spar caps, multiple shear webs, or detailed laminate layups cannot be defined. In addition, QFEM assumes isotropic material properties. For these reasons, QFEM is intended as a purely educational tool and should by no means be applied in an industrial design context.
For structural blade design, dedicated specialist tools such as SONATA, BECAS, or VABS should be used instead. These tools allow modelling of realistic composite blade cross sections and provide consistent sectional stiffness and mass properties, which can be directly used in QBlade’s structural and aero-elastic models. In practice, detailed structural design is therefore carried out in these tools, while QBlade is used for the subsequent aero-elastic load simulations.
Best regards,
David
