Experimental benchmark and code validation for airfoils equipped with passive vortex generators

Experimental results and complimentary computations for airfoils with vortex generators are compared in this paper, as part of an effort within the AVATAR project to develop tools for wind turbine blade control devices. Measurements from two airfoils equipped with passive vortex generators, a 30% thick DU97W300 and an 18% thick NTUA T18 have been used for benchmarking several simulation tools. These tools span low-to-high complexity, ranging from engineering-level integral boundary layer tools to fully-resolved computational fluid dynamics codes. Results indicate that with appropriate calibration, engineering-type tools can capture the effects of vortex generators and outperform more complex tools. Fully resolved CFD comes at a much higher computational cost and does not necessarily capture the increased lift due to the VGs. However, in lieu of the limited experimental data available for calibration, high fidelity tools are still required for assessing the effect of vortex generators on airfoil performance

Yaw-misalignment and its impact on wind turbine loads and wind farm power output

To make wind energy cost competitive with traditional resources, wind turbines are commonly placed in groups. Aerodynamic interaction between the turbines causes sub-optimal energy production. A control strategy to mitigate these losses is by redirecting the wake by yaw misalignment. This paper aims to assess the influence of load variations of the rotor due to partial wake overlap and presents a combined optimization of the power and loads using wake redirection. For this purpose, we design a computational framework which computes the wind farm power production and the wind turbine rotor loads based on the yaw settings. The simulation results show that partial wake overlap can significantly increase asymmetric loading of the rotor disk and that yaw misalignment is beneficial in situations where the wake can be sufficiently directed away from the downstream turbine

Benchmarking aerodynamic prediction of unsteady rotor aerodynamics of active flaps on wind turbine blades using ranging fidelity tools

Simulations of a stiff rotor configuration of the DTU 10MW Reference Wind Turbine are performed in order to assess the impact of prescribed flap motion on the aerodynamic loads on a blade sectional and rotor integral level. Results of the engineering models used by DTU (HAWC2), TUDelft (Bladed) and NTUA (hGAST) are compared to the CFD predictions of USTUTT-IAG (FLOWer). Results show fairly good comparison in terms of axial loading, while alignment of tangential and drag-related forces across the numerical codes needs to be improved, together with unsteady corrections associated with rotor wake dynamics. The use of a new wake model in HAWC2 shows considerable accuracy improvements

Statistical evaluation of the identified structural parameters of an idling offshore wind turbine

With the increased need for renewable energy, new offshore wind farms are being developed at an unprecedented scale. However, as the costs of offshore wind energy are still too high, design optimization and new innovations are required for lowering its cost. The design of modern day offshore wind turbines relies on numerical models for estimating ultimate and fatigue loads of the turbines. The dynamic behavior and the resulting structural loading of the turbines is determined for a large part by its structural properties, such as the natural frequencies and damping ratios. Hence, it is important to obtain accurate estimates of these modal properties. For this purpose stochastic subspace identification (SSI), in combination with clustering and statistical evaluation methods, is used to obtain the variance of the identified modal properties of an installed 3.6MW offshore wind turbine in idling conditions. It is found that one is able to obtain confidence intervals for the means of eigenfrequencies and damping ratios of the fore-aft and side-side modes of the wind turbine

Iterative tuning of feedforward IPC for two-bladed wind turbines

At present, the cost of offshore wind energy does not meet the level of onshore wind and fossil-based energy sources. One way to extend the turbine lifetime, and thus reduce cost, is by reduction of the fatigue loads of blades and other turbine parts using Individual Pitch Control (IPC). This type of control, which is generally implemented by feedback control using the MultiBlade Coordinate transformation on blade load measurement signals, is capable of mitigating the most dominant periodic loads. The main goal of this article is to develop a self-optimizing feedforward IPC strategy for a two-bladed wind turbine to reduce actuator duty cycle and reduce the dependency on blade load measurement signals. The approach uses blade load measurement data only initially for tuning of the feedforward controller, which is scheduled on the rotor azimuth angle and wind speed. The feedforward strategy will be compared to the feedback implementation in terms of load alleviation capabilities and actuator duty cycle. Results show that the implementation is capable of learning the optimal feedforward IPC controller in constant and turbulent wind conditions, to alleviate the pitch actuator duty cycle, and to considerably reduce harmonic fatigue loads without the need for blade load measurement signals after tuning