3D simulation of wind turbine rotors at full scale. Part II: Fluid–structure interaction modeling with composite blades

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this two-part paper, we present a collection of numerical methods combined into a single framework, which has the potential for a successful application to wind turbine rotor modeling and simulation. In Part 1 of this paper we focus on: 1. The basics of geometry modeling and analysis-suitable geometry construction for wind turbine rotors; 2. The fluid mechanics formulation and its suitability and accuracy for rotating turbulent flows; 3. The coupling of air flow and a rotating rigid body. In Part 2, we focus on the structural discretization for wind turbine blades and the details of the fluid-structure interaction computational procedures. The methods developed are applied to the simulation of the NREL 5MW offshore baseline wind turbine rotor. The simulations are performed at realistic wind velocity and rotor speed conditions and at full spatial scale. Validation against published data is presented and possibilities of the newly developed computational framework are illustrated on several examples.

Effects of wake-turbine blade interactions on power production of wind turbines

“…The NREL 5-MW offshore baseline wind turbine is a horizontal axis wind turbine with 3 blades upwind. This particular model has been adopted by many research teams around the world [7,8].…”

An interactive geometry modeling and parametric design platform for isogeometric analysis

“…In what follows, we make use of the rotation-free Kirchhoff-Love thin shell formulation [42,44] combined with classical laminated plate theory [60,137] to model the composite blade structural mechanics.…”

“…IGA has been successfully employed in many areas of engineering and sciences, such as fluid mechanics and turbulence [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], solid and structural mechanics [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], fluid-structure interaction [13,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63], phase-field modeling [64][65][66][67][68], complex fluids [69,70], Lagrangian shock hydrodynamics [71,72], contact mechanics [16,[73][74][75][76]…”

Simulation of transient gusts on the NREL 5 MW wind turbine using the URANS solver THETA

“…Furthermore, they investigated the impact of fences on the flow separation in the inboard region. Full aeroelastic computations were performed by Bazilevs et al (2011) for an isolated rotor and Hsu and Bazilevs (2012) for the rotor, tower, and nacelle. Bazilevs et al (2011) and Hsu and Bazilevs (2012) modelled the aerodynamics with an unsteady RANS (URANS) method and the structure with shell elements.…”