TITLE:
Development of a Fast Fluid-Structure Coupling Technique for Wind Turbine Computations
AUTHORS:
Matias Sessarego, Néstor Ramos-García, Wen Zhong Shen
KEYWORDS:
Fluid-Structure-Interaction, Wind-Turbine, Aero-Elasticity
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Power and Energy Engineering,
Vol.3 No.7,
July
17,
2015
ABSTRACT: Fluid-structure interaction simulations are
routinely used in the wind energy industry to evaluate the aerodynamic and
structural dynamic performance of wind turbines. Most aero-elastic codes in
modern times implement a blade element momentum technique to model the rotor
aerodynamics and a modal, multi-body, or finite-element approach to model the
turbine structural dynamics. The present paper describes a novel
fluid-structure coupling technique which combines a three- dimensional
viscous-inviscid solver for horizontal-axis wind-turbine aerodynamics, called
MIRAS, and the structural dynamics model used in the aero-elastic code FLEX5.
The new code, MIRAS- FLEX, in general shows good agreement with the standard
aero-elastic codes FLEX5 and FAST for various test cases. The structural model
in MIRAS-FLEX acts to reduce the aerodynamic load computed by MIRAS,
particularly near the tip and at high wind speeds.