This multi-disciplinary training platform has brought together top-rank academia, research centres and industrial stakeholders, actively involved in top-level research in the fields of fluid dynamics, aeroacoustics, structural dynamics and fatigue life prediction, uncertainty quantification, optimization methods, system dynamics and control, and human factors. Several results have been achieved by the 15 Early-Stage Researchers involved in the project, including:
1) Development of simulation tools, such as software and workflows. These tools have been used to accurately assess the wind energy resources over complex terrains, predict the aerodynamic loads and the acoustic emissions, and simulate the noise propagation. Particular attention was given to complex rural terrains with large horizontal-axis wind turbines and urban areas with vertical-axis wind turbines.
2) Experimental campaigns to understand the noise generation mechanisms. The experimental campaigns focused on wind turbine blade sections to explain the physical phenomena responsible for the increased noise emissions that characterize wind turbines in a highly turbulent urban environment. The scope was to enhance noise predictions of low-order methods and propose noise mitigation strategies.
3) Numerical investigations of aerodynamic and aeroacoustic characteristics of wind turbines. Comparative studies between different wind turbine geometries, flow control strategies and optimized blade shapes have been performed by high-fidelity numerical simulations.
4) Understanding of societal barriers to the implementation of renewable (wind) energy projects. It suggested that the public acceptance concept has several limitations, as it is mainly focused on the relationship between the public and technology and the public and producer of technology. Science, Technology and Society perspectives such as socio-technical imaginaries, assemblage theory, and sustainability experiments can and have been applied to the analysis of socio-technical wind energy systems.
