On Initial Design and Modelling of a 10 MW Medium Speed Drivetrain for Offshore Wind Turbines

Shuaishuai Wang,Amir R Nejad,Torgeir Moan

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1356/1/012024

Shuaishuai Wang, Amir R Nejad + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1356/1/012024

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Abstract

This paper presents the initial design and modelling of a medium speed drivetrain for the DTU 10 MW offshore wind turbine. Design basis and criteria of the drivetrain are described. Minimum weight and volume of the drivetrain are chosen as the main design targets. A four-point support, two main bearings and two torque arms, drivetrain configuration is selected in this study. One conventional gearbox layout, two planetary stages and one parallel stage, which is commonly used in large offshore wind turbines is adopted. Four gearbox layout options are provided and compared, and one optimal option is finally selected with holistic considerations of volume and weight as well as load sharing performance principles. Then, a high fidelity drivetrain numerical model for the 10 MW reference turbine is established using multi-body system (MBS) approach. In addition, model comparison is conducted, which shows that drivetrain eigenfrequencies in torsional mode obtained from the numerical model agree well with the values in the DTU report. Finally, future work relating to dynamic response analysis, critical limit states check for the drivetrain model is proposed.

Highlights

The offshore wind energy industry has been growing fast in the last decade, primarily due to the strong and steady wind resources in offshore fields
Based on the rotor design of the DTU 10 MW reference wind turbine (RWT), active trailing edge flaps were integrated into the blades design by Barlas et al.[4], and aeroelastic optimization of the design was conducted by utilizing a multi-disciplinary wind turbine analysis and optimizaion tool, HawtOpt2
The motivation of this study is to provide a baseline medium speed drivetrain model for the DTU 10 MW RWT, that could be used as a reference model for multi-megawatt offshore wind turbines

Summary

Introduction

The offshore wind energy industry has been growing fast in the last decade, primarily due to the strong and steady wind resources in offshore fields. Increasing the wind turbine size usually leads to the increase of its weight. To address this challenge, a 10 MW wind turbine concept, with a specialized light-rotor design, was proposed by Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in 2013 [2]. The DTU 10 MW reference wind turbine (RWT) was designed by upscaling the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW offshore wind turbine [3]. Based on the rotor design of the DTU 10 MW RWT, active trailing edge flaps were integrated into the blades design by Barlas et al.[4], and aeroelastic optimization of the design was conducted by utilizing a multi-disciplinary wind turbine analysis and optimizaion tool, HawtOpt.

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