Integrating COAWST and OpenFAST for wind turbine loading

Abstract

Modern research endeavors in wind energy have been increasingly focused on achieving accurate representations of wind turbine loading across diverse atmospheric conditions. Recent advancements in numerical weather prediction techniques make it possible to downscale weather conditions for operational use, underscoring the importance of including air-sea interactions using models such as the Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport model to improve wind energy predictions. Nevertheless, challenges of high computational costs, the elusive ”gray zone” in simulations, and creating accurate wind turbine digital twins for predictive modeling remain.The current research addresses this challenge by proposing a novel modeling framework integrating the COAWST model with the OpenFAST aeroelastic solver. The current research strives to bridge the gap between the different dynamic regimes involved under diverse atmospheric conditions to achieve real-world representative wind turbine loading. Therefore, a scaled wind turbine model is implemented in the OpenFAST aeroelastic solver. Further, this research tests and discusses the proposed model framework’s capabilities and limitations under extreme weather phenomena.