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Content archived on 2024-04-19

Development of a new generation of design tools for horizontal axis wind turbines

Objective

The development of a design tool, i.e. a model for the aerodynamic and the structural aspects of a wind turbine blade, will give valuable insight and lead to improvements. A numerical data base will be produced that could be used in the future as reference for both follow-up research and design. Findings will be widely disseminated and results and models be made available throughout Europe.

The aerodynamic models, GENUVP, LSURF and CBEM+, were coupled in three different non-linear aero-elastic design tools, sharing similar structural model and wind forces. The first two are new. The complete models have been tested and validated with respect to full-scale measurements on three different commercial turbines. A complete database of numerical results was also produced, that can be used in future research work as reference. A significant part of the results of the work is the software that has been developed. Some of the codes have been further improved and used in subsequent research and design practice.
As the basic feature of a design tool is its practical applicability, our point of departure is a simple model based on the blade element theory for the aerodynamic part and the beam approximation for the structural. Having at our disposal more elaborate models ranging up to fully three dimensional analysis for both the aerodynamics and the elastodynamics, the developments and improvements will proceed gradually. For example the lifting-line aerodynamic model will be tested as an alternative between the blade element and the fully 3D models. A supplement to these developments will be the introduction of realistic inflow conditions into the advanced models. Several evaluation tasks will be performed based on old as well as new experiments. This will give valuable insight into the behavior of the various models leading to the necessary improvements. On the other hand a numerical data base will be produced that could be used in the future as a reference for both follow-up research and design. We intend to disseminate our findings widely and make our results and models available throughout Europe.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

National Technical University of Athens
EU contribution
No data
Address
28th Octobriu
10682 Athens
Greece

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Total cost
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Participants (4)