Abstract
The simulation of wind turbines with bend-twist adaptive blades is a coupled aero-structure (CAS) procedure. The blade twist due to elastic coupling is a required parameter for wind turbine performance evaluation and can be predicted through a finite element (FE) structural analyser. FEA-based codes are far too slow to be useful in the aerodynamic design/optimisation of a blade. This paper presents a combined analytical/FEA-based method for CAS simulation of wind turbines utilising bend-twist adaptive blades. This method of simulation employs the induced twist distribution and the flap bending at the hub of the blade predicted through a FEA-based CAS simulation at a reference wind turbine run condition to determine the wind turbine performance at other wind turbine run conditions. This reduces the computational time significantly and makes the aerodynamic design/optimisation of bend-twist adaptive blades practical. Comparison of the results of a case study which applies both combined analytical/FEA-based and FEA-based CAS simulation shows that when using the combined method the required computational time for generating a power curve reduces to less than 5%, while the relative difference between the predicted powers by two methods is only about 1%. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 916-930 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Renewable Energy |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 12 Jun 2006 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2007 |
Keywords
- wind turbine
- adaptive blade
- elastic coupling
- coupled-aero-structure simulation
- thin-walled-beams
- composite rotor blades
- elastic couplings
- cross-sections
- behavior
- model