Abstract
Recently, there is a growing interest in seismic qualification of ridges, buildings and mechanical equipment worldwide due to increase of accidents caused by earthquake. Severe earthquake can bring serious problems in the wind turbines and eventually lead to an interruption to their electric power supply. To overcome and prevent these undesirable problems, structural design optimization of a small vertical axis wind turbine has performed, in this study, for seismic qualification and lightweight by using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) subject to some design constraints such as the maximum stress limit, maximum deformation limit, and seismic acceleration gain limit. Also, the structural design optimizations were conducted for the four different initial design variable sets to confirm robustness of the optimization algorithm used. As a result, all the optimization results for the 4 different initial designs showed good agreement with each other properly. Thus the structural design optimization of a small vertical-axis wind turbine could be successfully accomplished.
Highlights
Since the adoption of the UNFCC (United Nations Framework for Convention on Climate Change) in 1992, requiring each country to reduce green-house gases, extensive R & D efforts for new renewable energy have been exerted across the globe [1] [2]
The present study draws on the FEM (Finite Elements Method) and GA (Genetic Algorithm) [5] for design optimization with intent to improve the seismic qualification and minimize the weight of small vertical axis wind turbines
To test the robustness of the design optimization based on the genetic algorithm, each of 4 different initial designs underwent the design optimization, and the results were comparatively analyzed
Summary
Since the adoption of the UNFCC (United Nations Framework for Convention on Climate Change) in 1992, requiring each country to reduce green-house gases, extensive R & D efforts for new renewable energy have been exerted across the globe [1] [2]. With the wind power among other new renewable energy options drawing much attention. Kang for its economic feasibility and potential for energy production, a range of wind turbines have been developed. Seismic qualification should be considered in designing a wind turbine operating normally even when natural disasters such as earthquakes occur [3] [4]. The present study draws on the FEM (Finite Elements Method) and GA (Genetic Algorithm) [5] for design optimization with intent to improve the seismic qualification and minimize the weight of small vertical axis wind turbines. To test the robustness of the GA-based design optimization, 4 different sets of initial design variables were applied and the consistency of the results was compared
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