This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

The issues in the field of energy generation, sustainability and resource consumption are omnipresent. For wind turbines in particular, sustainable and robust lightweight construction is both a must and a challenge. New lightweight construction approaches can be realised using a new manufacturing process called NECTO© structures. Conventional materials such as CFRP or GFRP involve high disposal costs and environmental problems during disposal. NECTO© structures are punched sheets embossed in the spatial axis, which are completed with a cover layer to form ultra-light and very rigid panel systems, monolithic or joined from different materials. The production method works with steel as well as aluminium and therefore offers excellent opportunities to make lightweight construction particularly sustainable and to overcome many challenges for sandwich shells, e.g. the multi-axis curvature of the shell or variable wall thicknesses. Despite the good stiffness and strength values, the weight of the core easily fulfils the requirements of ultra-lightweight design. For the industrial utilisation of this technology, however, it is essential that a simulative possibility of behaviour and stability prediction is available and verified. This applies in particular to large structures such as wind turbines, where real tests are virtually unaffordable and entail corresponding risks. The requirements and the innovative lightweight construction approach will be presented in the lecture. The type of structural design will be considered in depth, with a particular focus on load-bearing capacity. Load-bearing structures such as towers or rotor blades require a very robust virtual design, for which there are still no common methods for that kind of structures. The presentation will introduce in the method, the consideration of micro-, meso- and meta-modelling and the comparison with real tests form the basis for the use of the new lightweight construction technology. Finally, the current status of simulation technology and the outlook for further possible areas of application are presented.