It is important to estimate the peel stress in the adhesive joint in the trailing edge of wind turbine blades as it is subject to a fatigue loading. In finite-element-analysis, this joint is often modeled with solid elements connected with the shell elements of the blade. However, the stiffness discontinuity in this edge leads to singularity, thus the stress values tend toward infinity with increased mesh density.
Malo Rosemeier (Fraunhofer IWES), Thomas Gebauer (PEC), and Alexandros Antoniou (Fraunhofer IWES) proposed a practical approach to predict the peel stress peak in this adhesive layer by using analytical methods. The model approximates and extrapolates the results from the numerical FE analysis to obtain the peel stress peak value of interest.
Check out the presentation slides and the paper on this link.