Effectively using multifidelity optimization for wind turbine design

Abstract

Abstract. Wind turbines are complex multidisciplinary systems that are challenging to design because of the tightly coupled interactions between different subsystems. Computational modeling attempts to resolve these couplings so we can efficiently explore new wind turbine systems early in the design process. Low-fidelity models are computationally efficient but make assumptions and simplifications that limit the accuracy of design studies, whereas high-fidelity models capture more of the actual physics but with increased computational cost. This paper details the use of multifidelity methods for optimizing wind turbine designs by using information from both low- and high-fidelity models to find an optimal solution at reduced cost. Specifically, a trust-region approach is used with a novel corrective function built from a nonlinear surrogate model. We find that for a diverse set of design problems—with examples given in rotor blade geometry design, wind turbine controller design, and wind power plant layout optimization—the multifidelity method finds the optimal design using 38 %–58 % the computational cost of the high-fidelity-only optimization. The success of the multifidelity method in disparate applications suggests that it could be more broadly applied to other wind energy or otherwise generic applications.

Effectively using multifidelity optimization for wind turbine design

“…Code and data availability. All code and models used in this paper are open source and provided here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6109699 (Jasa et al, 2022).…”

Modeling the Coupled Aero-Hydro-Servo-Dynamic Response of 15 Mw Floating Wind Turbines with Wind Tunnel Hard- Ware in the Loop

“…The wind turbine has two control strategies: in one, rotor speed and blade pitch are constant and prescribed in an open-loop fashion; in the other, generator torque and collective-blade pitch are changed dynamically with the Reference Open-Source Controller (ROSCO) presented in [33,34] based on feedback of generator speed and measurement of wind speed. The ROSCO has region-based control strategies that maximize power production in below rated wind speeds and regulate rotor speed by means of collective blade pitch in above rated wind speeds.…”

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail-transportable blades – Part 1: Conceptual design and aeroservoelastic performance

“…-This study has adopted WISDEM and OpenFAST, which are characterized by two different levels of fidelity. Work is ongoing to adopt formal approaches for the multifidelity optimization of wind turbines (Jasa et al, 2021).…”