In recent years, small-scale wind turbines (WTs) have gained much attention from consumers, researchers, and engineers across the globe. It has been reported that large-scale wind turbine manufacturing costs have reduced to 15-20% of the total production. Recently, it has also been reported that wind turbine prices have reduced due to the progress in material development.

Background: A literature review shows that lighter WT blades are significantly important for producing higher rotational speeds. The investigation of design and properties for lighter materials is crucial for the structural integrity of the application. A limited number of researchers reported WT material development by using additive manufacturing (AM) for small-scale applications. Still, material design with weight reduction is not a well-explored area.

Objective: The research aims to study the influence of material design and the corresponding weight of the produced part for different materials.

Method: In this research, we used an additive manufacturing method to design a small-scale wind turbine blade. The WT turbine blade design can be incorporated by using different lattice structures. The design-integrated WT blade was fabricated using the AM technique. We applied the fused deposition modeling (FDM) method, which is one of the AM methods and widely popular for producing polymeric material parts. The FDM-processed design-integrated WT blade was produced for polylactic acid and polyvinylidene fluoride polymeric materials. The weight of the turbine blades was collected, and the blades were tested in a wind tunnel to investigate their performance.

Finding: The result showed the influence of WT blade design and material impact on the performance of this approach. The findings provide insights into the applicability of additive manufacturing in rapid prototyping and functional deployment of small wind turbines.