Investigation of potential extreme load reduction for a two-bladed upwind turbine with partial pitch

This paper presents a wind turbine concept with an innovative design combining partial pitch with a two-bladed (PP-2B) turbine configuration. Special emphasis is on extreme load reduction during storm situations at standstill, but operational loads are also investigated. In order to compare the loads and dynamics of the PP-2B turbine, a partial pitch three-bladed (PP-3B) turbine and a normal pitch regulated three-bladed (3B) turbine are introduced on the basis of solidity similarity scaling. From the dynamic comparisons between two- and three-bladed turbines, it has been observed that the blade vibrations are transferred differently from the rotor to the tower. For a three-bladed turbine, blade vibrations seen in a fixed frame of reference are split with ±1P only. A two-bladed turbine has a similar split of ±1P but also includes contributions on higher harmonics (±2P, ±3P, ... etc.). Further on, frequency split is also seen for the tower vibrations, where an additional ±2P contribution has been observed for the two-bladed turbine. Regarding load comparisons, the PP-2B turbine produces larger tower load variations because of 2P excitation during the operational cases. However, extreme loads are reduced by approximately 20% for the PP-2B and 18% for the PP-3B compared with the 3B turbine for the parked condition in a storm situation. Moreover, a huge potential of 60% is observed for the reduction of the extreme tower bottom bending moment for the PP-2B turbine, when the wind direction is from ±90° to the turbine, but this also requires that the turbine is parked in a T-configuration

Wind Energy and the Turbulent Nature of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Wind turbines operate in the atmospheric boundary layer, where they are exposed to the turbulent atmospheric flows. As the response time of wind turbine is typically in the range of seconds, they are affected by the small scale intermittent properties of the turbulent wind. Consequently, basic features which are known for small-scale homogeneous isotropic turbulence, and in particular the well-known intermittency problem, have an important impact on the wind energy conversion process. We report on basic research results concerning the small-scale intermittent properties of atmospheric flows and their impact on the wind energy conversion process. The analysis of wind data shows strongly intermittent statistics of wind fluctuations. To achieve numerical modeling a data-driven superposition model is proposed. For the experimental reproduction and adjustment of intermittent flows a so-called active grid setup is presented. Its ability is shown to generate reproducible properties of atmospheric flows on the smaller scales of the laboratory conditions of a wind tunnel. As an application example the response dynamics of different anemometer types are tested. To achieve a proper understanding of the impact of intermittent turbulent inflow properties on wind turbines we present methods of numerical and stochastic modeling, and compare the results to measurement data. As a summarizing result we find that atmospheric turbulence imposes its intermittent features on the complete wind energy conversion process. Intermittent turbulence features are not only present in atmospheric wind, but are also dominant in the loads on the turbine, i.e. rotor torque and thrust, and in the electrical power output signal. We conclude that profound knowledge of turbulent statistics and the application of suitable numerical as well as experimental methods are necessary to grasp these unique features (...)Comment: Accepted by the Journal of Turbulence on May 17, 201

Gravitino Dark Matter Scenarios with Massive Metastable Charged Sparticles at the LHC

We investigate the measurement of supersymmetric particle masses at the LHC in gravitino dark matter (GDM) scenarios where the next-to-lightest supersymmetric partner (NLSP) is the lighter scalar tau, or stau, and is stable on the scale of a detector. Such a massive metastable charged sparticle would have distinctive Time-of-Flight (ToF) and energy-loss ($dE/dx$) signatures. We summarise the documented accuracies expected to be achievable with the ATLAS detector in measurements of the stau mass and its momentum at the LHC. We then use a fast simulation of an LHC detector to demonstrate techniques for reconstructing the cascade decays of supersymmetric particles in GDM scenarios, using a parameterisation of the detector response to staus, taus and jets based on full simulation results. Supersymmetric pair-production events are selected with high redundancy and efficiency, and many valuable measurements can be made starting from stau tracks in the detector. We recalibrate the momenta of taus using transverse-momentum balance, and use kinematic cuts to select combinations of staus, taus, jets and leptons that exhibit peaks in invariant masses that correspond to various heavier sparticle species, with errors often comparable with the jet energy scale uncertainty.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, updated to version published in JHE

Comparison of Engineering Wake Models with CFD Simulations

The engineering wake models by Jensen [1] and Frandsen et al. [2] are assessed for different scenarios simulated using Large Eddy Simulation and the Actuator Line method implemented in the Navier-Stokes equations. The scenarios include the far wake behind a single wind turbine, a long row of turbines in an atmospheric boundary layer, idealised cases of an infinitely long row of wind turbines and infinite wind farms with three different spacings. Both models include a wake expansion factor, which is calibrated to fit the simulated wake velocities. The analysis highlights physical deficiencies in the ability of the models to universally predict the wake velocities, as the expansion factor can be fitted for a given case, but with not apparent transition between the cases. 1