Conceptual Designs of the Structure of Inflatable Blades for Enabling Larger Turbines

Mendoza, Nicole; Feil, Roland; Johnson, Nick; Anderson, Benjamin

doi:10.2514/6.2021-0815

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This research demonstrated that this inflatable blade concept is feasible and practical and can offer some significant blade mass and material cost reductions. More details can be found in (Mendoza et al 2021).…”

Section: Inflatable Bladementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Big Adaptive Rotor Phase I Final Report

Johnson¹,

Paquette²,

Bortolotti³

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at www.nrel.gov/publications.3. Completed research-and-development opportunity screening 4. Performed model improvements and detailed design studies 5. Assessed low-cost carbon fiber.The remainder of this report focuses on the findings from each task and includes excerpts and citations from previously published work.

show abstract

Section: Inflatable Bladementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Please note that the next paragraph from the original text was removed for clarity 9. Please note that some paragraphs are skipped here for clarity, and for citations in excerpt, please reference the original publication 10.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Big Adaptive Rotor Phase I Final Report

Johnson¹,

Paquette²,

Bortolotti³

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The BAR project has considered several segmentation strategies, including inflatable blades [4] and spanwise joints. The latter strategy reduces the length of the blade segments, easing manufacturing and transportation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of an open-source segmented blade design tool

Anderson

Bortolotti

Johnson

2022

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As wind turbines continue to grow ever larger to reduce the cost of energy, their blades follow suit, with the largest commercial offshore blades extending past 100 m. Massive blades such as these raise key transportation and manufacturing challenges, especially for land-based turbines. Segmented blades are one solution and are garnering increased industry and research interest. In this work, a detailed mechanical joint model is integrated into the Wind-Plant Integrated System Design and Engineering Model (WISDEM®), which will facilitate future segmented blade research and optimization. WISDEM is used to design a wind turbine with 100-m segmented blades. This wind turbine design is compared to other machines with 100-m monolithic blades designed for rail-transportability. The designs are compared in terms of blade mass and cost, turbine capital cost, annual energy production, and levelized cost of energy, with monolithic designs being the lightest and most economical. However, this result may vary by wind plant location. A variety of segmentation joint types exist, and they will inevitably vary in parameters such as cost, spanwise location, and physical characteristics. This work examines the sensitivity of wind turbine design drivers and annual energy production to a variety of the aforementioned parameters, using the open-source wind turbine design codes OpenFAST and WISDEM, finding that joint mass, stiffness, and location can have significant effects on design drivers.

show abstract