Aeroelastic Code Research Articles

Impacts of the low-level jet's negative wind shear on the wind turbine

Abstract. Nocturnal low-level jets (LLJs) are defined as relative maxima in the vertical profile of the horizontal wind speed at the top of the stable boundary layer. Such peaks constitute major power resources for wind turbines. However, a wind speed maximum implies a transition from positive wind shears below the peak to negative ones above. The effect that such a transition has on wind turbines has not been thoroughly studied.This research study employed a methodical approach to the study of negative wind shear's impacts on wind turbines. Up to now, the presence of negative shears inside the turbine's rotor in relation to the presence of positive shears has been largely ignored. A parameter has been proposed to quantify that presence in future studies of LLJ–wind-turbine interactions. Simulations were performed using the NREL aeroelastic simulator FAST code. Rather than using synthetic profiles to generate the wind data, all simulations were based on real data captured at the high frequency of 50 Hz, which allowed us to perform the analysis of a turbine's impacts with real-life, small scales of wind motions.It was found that the presence of negative wind shears at the height of the turbine's rotor appeared to exert a positive impact on reducing the motions of the nacelle and the tower in every direction, with oscillations reaching a minimum when negative shears covered the turbine swept area completely. Only the tower wobbling in the spanwise direction was amplified by the negative shears; however, this occurred at the tower's slower velocities and accelerations. The forces and moments were also reduced by the negative shears. The aforementioned impacts were less beneficial in the rotating parts, such as the blades and the shafts. Finally, the variance in power production was also reduced. These findings can be very important for the next generation of wind turbines as they reach deeper into LLJ's typical heights.The study demonstrated that the presence of negative shears is significant in reducing the loading on wind turbines. A major conclusion of this study is that the wind turbines of the future should probably be designed with the aim of reaching the top of the nightly boundary layer more often and therefore the altitudes where negative shears are more frequent. Doing so will help to reduce the positive shear's associated damage and to capture the significant LLJ energy.

Elastic actuator line modelling for wake-induced fatigue analysis of horizontal axis wind turbine blade

Wake effect causes fatigue increase on the horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) blades. This wake-induced fatigue has significant impacts on the efficiency and lifespan of the whole wind farm. However, conventional aeroelastic codes are deficient in terms of turbulent wake modelling and wake interaction modelling. To accurately carry out the aeroelastic simulation in multi-wake operation, an “elastic actuator line” (EAL) model is proposed. Essentially, this model is the combination of the actuator line (AL) wake model and a finite difference structural model. The present research includes two parts. Firstly, the proposed EAL model is outlined. To better establish the two-way coupling between the structural model and the AL model, the transformation of a set of structural equations is presented. Secondly, numerical structural model is established. To verify the present model, the simulated results by EAL for a single NREL 5 MW turbine are compared with those obtained with the aeroelastic code FAST. And the comparison shows a good agreement for both high and low TSRs (Tip-Speed-Ratios). Another case study for the wake interaction involving two staggered HAWTs is also carried out, which shows that the downstream wind turbine truly experiences an obvious wake-induced fatigue increase based on our equivalent fatigue load analysis.

A validation and code-to-code verification of FAST for a megawatt-scale wind turbine with aeroelastically tailored blades

Abstract. This paper presents validation and code-to-code verification of the latest version of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory wind turbine aeroelastic engineering simulation tool, FAST v8. A set of 1141 test cases, for which experimental data from a Siemens 2.3 MW machine have been made available and were in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission 61400-13 guidelines, were identified. These conditions were simulated using FAST as well as the Siemens in-house aeroelastic code, BHawC. This paper presents a detailed analysis comparing results from FAST with those from BHawC as well as experimental measurements, using statistics including the means and the standard deviations along with the power spectral densities of select turbine parameters and loads. Results indicate good agreement among the predictions using FAST, BHawC, and experimental measurements. These agreements are discussed in detail in this paper, along with some comments regarding the differences seen in these comparisons relative to the inherent uncertainties in such a model-based analysis.

Fault estimation and fault‐tolerant control of the FAST NREL 5‐MW reference wind turbine using a proportional multi‐integral observer

SummaryA proportional multi‐integral (PMI) observer scheme is used to reconstruct actuator and sensor faults in large‐scale wind turbines. For the nonlinear full‐load region, a PMI observer in Takagi‐Sugeno form is used. Two different methods are proposed for the observer design: a Lyapunov‐based and a modified linear quadratic regulator approach, where the stability is ensured by a negative derivative of the Lyapunov function candidate. The actuator and sensor faults are directly reconstructed from an augmented state‐space vector. The control inputs and measurement signal are then modified with the reconstructed fault signals to achieve fault‐tolerant control in the presence of faults with a similar behavior to the fault‐free case. It is shown by extensive simulation studies that the PMI observer is able the reconstruct offset and ramp‐shaped faults with high accuracy. The performance of the fault reconstruction and fault‐tolerant control scheme based on a 4‐degree‐of‐freedom observer model is tested in simulations by a high‐order 24‐degree‐of‐freedom model with the aeroelastic code FAST by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The new results are also compared with those of the previously published fault reconstruction scheme using Takagi‐Sugeno sliding‐mode observers.

Fast Estimation of the Damage Equivalent Load in Blade Geometry Multidisciplinar Optimization

Designing blade geometry as a multidisciplinary optimization presents important challenges due to the increment in the number of design variables and computational cost of calculating the constraints and objective function. Blades have an important impact on loads because they capture the kinetic energy in wind and transfer it to the rest of the wind turbine components. Thus, consideration of the fatigue response is necessary in the optimization problem. However, the calculation of the damage equivalent loads (DELs) implies time-consuming simulations that restrict the number of design variables due to the increment of the search space. This article proposes a frequency domain method to estimate the fatigue response, which produces an advantage in terms of computational cost. The method is based on wind turbine model linearization by means of an aero-elastic code and the subsequent calculation of a frequency response function (FRF), which serves to estimate the response of the wind turbine. The Dirlik method is then applied to infer the damage equivalent loads. This process, which is useful for variables that have a stochastic nature, provides rapid approximate prediction of the fatigue response. An alternative estimation is proposed for loads subjected to an important periodic component. The results show that the method is useful in the initial stages of design.

A combined aeroelastic‐aeroacoustic model for wind turbine noise: verification and analysis of field measurements

AbstractIn this paper, semi‐empirical engineering models for the three main wind turbine aerodynamic noise sources, namely, turbulent inflow, trailing edge and stall noise, are introduced. They are implemented into the in‐house aeroelastic code HAWC2 commonly used for wind turbine load calculations and design. The results of the combined aeroelastic and aeroacoustic model are compared with field noise measurements of a 500 kW wind turbine. Model and experimental data are in fairly good agreement in terms of noise levels and directivity. The combined model allows separating the various noise sources and highlights a number of mechanisms that are difficult to differentiate when only the overall noise from a wind turbine is measured. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Development of an aeroelastic code based on three‐dimensional viscous–inviscid method for wind turbine computations

AbstractAerodynamic and structural dynamic performance analysis of modern wind turbines are routinely estimated in the wind energy field using computational tools known as aeroelastic codes. Most aeroelastic codes use the blade element momentum (BEM) technique to model the rotor aerodynamics and a modal, multi‐body or the finite‐element approach to model the turbine structural dynamics. The present work describes the development of a novel aeroelastic code that combines a three‐dimensional viscous–inviscid interactive method, method for interactive rotor aerodynamic simulations (MIRAS), with the structural dynamics model used in the aeroelastic code FLEX5. The new code, called MIRAS‐FLEX, is an improvement on standard aeroelastic codes because it uses a more advanced aerodynamic model than BEM. With the new aeroelastic code, more physical aerodynamic predictions than BEM can be obtained as BEM uses empirical relations, such as tip loss corrections, to determine the flow around a rotor. Although more costly than BEM, a small cluster is sufficient to run MIRAS‐FLEX in a fast and easy way. MIRAS‐FLEX is compared against the widely used FLEX5 and FAST, as well as the participant codes from the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Project. Simulation tests consist of steady wind inflow conditions with different combinations of yaw error, wind shear, tower shadow and turbine‐elastic modeling. Turbulent inflow created by using a Mann box is also considered. MIRAS‐FLEX results, such as blade tip deflections and root‐bending moments, are generally in good agreement with the other codes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Identification of aerodynamic damping in wind turbines using time-frequency analysis

The paper presents a wavelet-based linearization method for evaluating aerodynamic damping of a wind turbine during operation. The method is used to estimate the aerodynamic damping solely from actual measurements of the dynamic response of the operating wind turbine due to ambient excitation from air turbulence and control forces. Based on the response measurements the generalised displacement, velocity and acceleration vectors related to a given aeroelastic model and an available aeroelastic code are estimated by a state observer. Then, the external generalised load vector, depending on the generalised velocity vector, is obtained from the aeroelastic code. Next, the external generalised load vector is linearized into two parts: a quasi-static load vector independent on the generalised velocity vector and a first order term linearly proportional to the velocity vector indicating the aerodynamic damping matrix. Filtering technique is applied to evaluate the quasi-static load vector from the actual measurements of the structural stiffness force, made up as a product of the time-dependent stiffness matrix and the estimated generalised displacement vector. Finally, the time-dependent aerodynamic damping matrix has been evaluated by wavelet analysis at each time step. Unlike other inverse-based approaches, this wavelet-based method can avoid calculating the inverse of the velocity vector covariance matrix, which is singular. The proposed method has been illustrated by a reduced 13-DOF aeroelastic model, which is used to mimic the in situ response measured on the wind turbine.

Wind Turbine Aeroelastic Modeling: Basics and Cutting Edge Trends

The interaction of fluid flow and the structure dynamic of the system is a vital subject for machines operating under their coupling. It is not different for wind turbine either, especially as the coupling enhanced for multi-MW turbine with larger and flexible blades and complex control methods, and other nonlinearity, more comprehensive aeroelastic tools will be required to investigate the realistic phenomena. The present paper will overview the aeroelastic tool for wind turbine, the efforts done, gaps, and future directions indicated. One starts with background of the subject, presenting a case study to demonstrate the effect of fluid-structure interaction considering NREL 5MW blade and a brief comparison of several aeroelastic codes. Cutting edge efforts done in the area such as complex inflow, effect of geometric nonlinearity, and other stability and smart control issues are addressed and concluded by elaborating the gaps and future direction of aeroelasticity of wind turbine.

Multi-hazard response analysis of a 5MW offshore wind turbine

Wind energy has already dominant role on the scene of the clean energy production. Well-promising markets, like China, India, Korea and Latin America are the fields of expansion for new wind turbines mainly installed in offshore environment, where wind, wave and earthquake loads threat the structural integrity and reliability of these energy infrastructures. Along these lines, a multi-hazard environment was considered herein and the structural performance of a 5 MW offshore wind turbine was assessed through time domain analysis. A fully integrated model of the offshore structure consisting of the blades, the nacelle, the tower and the monopile was developed with the use of an aeroelastic code considering the interaction between the elastic and inertial forces, developed in the structure, as well as the generated aerodynamic and hydrodynamic forces. Based on the analysis results, the dynamic response of the turbine’s tower was found to be severely affected by the earthquake excitations. Moreover, fragility analysis based on acceleration capacity thresholds for the nacelle’s equipment corroborated that the earthquake excitations may adversely affect the reliability and availability of wind turbines.

Active tuned mass damper for damping of offshore wind turbine vibrations

An active tuned mass damper (ATMD) is employed for damping of tower vibrations of fixed offshore wind turbines, where the additional actuator force is controlled using feedback from the tower displacement and the relative velocity of the damper mass. An optimum tuning procedure equivalent to the tuning procedure of the passive tuned mass damper combined with a simple procedure for minimizing the control force is employed for determination of optimum damper parameters and feedback gain values. By time domain simulations conducted in an aeroelastic code, it is demonstrated that the ATMD can be used to further reduce the structural response of the wind turbine compared with the passive tuned mass damper and this without an increase in damper mass. A limiting factor of the design of the ATMD is the displacement of the damper mass, which for the ATMD, increases to compensate for the reduction in mass. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Large Wind Turbine Rotor Design using an Aero-Elastic / Free-Wake Panel Coupling Code

Despite the advances in computing resources in the recent years, the majority of large wind-turbine rotor design problems still rely on aero-elastic codes that use blade element momentum (BEM) approaches to model the rotor aerodynamics. The present work describes an approach to wind-turbine rotor design by incorporating a higher-fidelity free-wake panel aero-elastic coupling code called MIRAS-FLEX. The optimization procedure includes a series of design load cases and a simple structural design code. Due to the heavy MIRAS-FLEX computations, a surrogate-modeling approach is applied to mitigate the overall computational cost of the optimization. Improvements in cost of energy, annual energy production, maximum flap-wise root bending moment, and blade mass were obtained for the NREL 5MW baseline wind turbine.

Field Validation of the Stability Limit of a Multi MW Turbine

Long slender blades of modern multi-megawatt turbines exhibit a flutter like instability at rotor speeds above a critical rotor speed. Knowing the critical rotor speed is crucial to a safe turbine design. The flutter like instability can only be estimated using geometrically non-linear aeroelastic codes. In this study, the estimated rotor speed stability limit of a 7 MW state of the art wind turbine is validated experimentally. The stability limit is estimated using Siemens Wind Powers in-house aeroelastic code, and the results show that the predicted stability limit is within 5% of the experimentally observed limit.

Extreme load alleviation using industrial implementation of active trailing edge flaps in a full design load basis

The application of active trailing edge flaps in an industrial oriented implementation is evaluated in terms of capability of alleviating design extreme loads. A flap system with basic control functionality is implemented and tested in a realistic full Design Load Basis (DLB) for the DTU 10MW Reference Wind Turbine (RWT) model and for an upscaled rotor version in DTU's aeroelastic code HAWC2. The flap system implementation shows considerable potential in reducing extreme loads in components of interest including the blades, main bearing and tower top, with no influence on fatigue loads and power performance. In addition, an individual flap controller for fatigue load reduction in above rated power conditions is also implemented and integrated in the general controller architecture. The system is shown to be a technology enabler for rotor upscaling, by combining extreme and fatigue load reduction.

Experimental and numerical study of a 10MW TLP wind turbine in waves and wind

This paper presents tests on a 1:60 version of the DTU 10MW wind turbine mounted on a tension leg platform and their numerical reproduction. Both the experimental setup and the numerical model are Froude-scaled, and the dynamic response of the floating wind turbine to wind and waves is compared in terms of motion in the six degrees of freedom, nacelle acceleration and mooring line tension. The numerical model is implemented in the aero-elastic code Flex5, featuring the unsteady BEM method and the Morison equation for the modelling of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, respectively. It was calibrated with the tests by matching key system features, namely the steady thrust curve and the decay tests in water. The calibrated model is used to reproduce the wind-wave climates in the laboratory, including regular and irregular waves, with and without wind. The model predictions are compared to the measured data, and a good agreement is found for surge and heave, while some discrepancies are observed for pitch, nacelle acceleration and line tension. The addition of wind generally improves the agreement with test results. The aerodynamic damping is identified in both tests and simulations. Finally, the sources of the discrepancies are discussed and some improvements in the numerical model are suggested in order to obtain a better agreement with the experiments.

On the influence of airfoil deviations on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine rotors

The manufacture of large wind turbine rotor blades is a difficult task that still involves a certain degree of manual labor. Due to the complexity, airfoil deviations between the design airfoils and the manufactured blade are certain to arise. Presently, the understanding of the impact of manufacturing uncertainties on the aerodynamic performance is still incomplete. The present work analyzes the influence of a series of airfoil deviations likely to occur during manufacturing by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics and the aeroelastic code FAST. The average power production of the NREL 5MW wind turbine is used to evaluate the different airfoil deviations. Analyzed deviations include: Mold tilt towards the leading and trailing edge, thick bond lines, thick bond lines with cantilever correction, backward facing steps and airfoil waviness. The most severe influences are observed for mold tilt towards the leading and thick bond lines. By applying the cantilever correction, the influence of thick bond lines is almost compensated. Airfoil waviness is very dependent on amplitude height and the location along the surface of the airfoil. Increased influence is observed for backward facing steps, once they are high enough to trigger boundary layer transition close to the leading edge.

Comparison of linear and non-linear blade model predictions in Bladed to measurement data from GE 6MW wind turbine

The length and flexibility of wind turbine blades are increasing over time. Typically, the dynamic response of the blades is analysed using linear models of blade deflection, enhanced by various ad-hoc non-linear correction models. For blades undergoing large deflections, the small deflection assumption inherent to linear models becomes less valid. It has previously been demonstrated that linear and nonlinear blade models can show significantly different blade response, particularly for blade torsional deflection, leading to load prediction differences. There is a need to evaluate how load predictions from these two approaches compare to measurement data from the field.In this paper, time domain simulations in turbulent wind are carried out using the aero-elastic code Bladed with linear and non-linear blade deflection models. The turbine blade load and deflection simulation results are compared to measurement data from an onshore prototype of the GE 6MW Haliade turbine, which features 73.5m long LM blades. Both linear and non-linear blade models show a good match to measurement turbine load and blade deflections. Only the blade loads differ significantly between the two models, with other turbine loads not strongly affected. The non-linear blade model gives a better match to the measured blade root flapwise damage equivalent load, suggesting that the flapwise dynamic behaviour is better captured by the non-linear blade model. Conversely, the linear blade model shows a better match to measurements in some areas such as blade edgewise damage equivalent load.

A model for Quick Load Analysis for monopile-type offshore wind turbine substructures

A model for Quick Load Analysis, QuLA, of an offshore wind turbine substructure is presented. The aerodynamic rotor loads and damping are precomputed for a load-based configuration. The dynamic structural response is represented by the first global fore-aft mode only and is computed in the frequency domain using the equation of motion. The model is compared against the state of the art aeroelastic code, Flex5, and both life time fatigue and extreme loads are considered in the comparison. In general there is good similarity between the two models. Some derivation for the sectional forces are explained in terms of the model simplifications. The difference in the sectional moments are found to be within 14% for the fatigue load case and 10% for the extreme load condition.

Statistics of LES Simulations of Large Wind Farms

Numerous large eddy simulations are performed of large wind farms using the actuator line method, which has been fully coupled to the aero-elastic code, Flex5. The higher order moments of the flow field inside large wind farms is examined in order to determine a representative reference velocity. The statistical moments appear to collapse and hence the turbulence inside large wind farms can potentially be scaled accordingly. The thrust coefficient is estimated by two different reference velocities and the generic CT expression by Frandsen. A reference velocity derived from the power production is shown to give very good agreement and furthermore enables the very good estimation of the thrust force using only the steady CT-curve, even for very short time samples. Finally, the effective turbulence inside large wind farms and the equivalent loads are examined.

Power performance optimization and loads alleviation with active flaps using individual flap control

The present article investigates the potential of Active Trailing Edge Flaps (ATEF) in terms of increase in annual energy production (AEP) as well as reduction of fatigue loads. The basis for this study is the DTU 10 MW Reference Wind Turbine (RWT) simulated using the aeroelastic code HAWC2. In an industrial-oriented manner the baseline rotor is upscaled by 5% and the ATEFs are implemented in the outer 30% of the blades. The flap system is kept simple and robust with a single flap section and control with wind speed, rotor azimuth, root bending moments and angle of attack in flap's mid-section being the sensor inputs. The AEP is increased due to the upscaling but also further due to the flap system while the fatigue loads in components of interest (blade, tower, nacelle and main bearing) are reduced close to the level of the original turbine. The aim of this study is to demonstrate a simple and applicable method that can be a technology enabler for rotor upscaling and lowering cost of energy.