Skip to main content
OSTI.GOVU.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

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

Journal Article · · Wind Energy Science (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [3]
  1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
  2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  3. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
This work investigates the conceptual design and the aeroservoelastic performance of land-based wind turbines whose blades can be transported on rail via controlled bending. The turbines have a nameplate power of 5 MW and a rotor diameter of 206 m, and they aim to represent the next generation of land-based machines. Three upwind designs and two downwind designs are presented, combining different design goals together with conventional glass and pultruded carbon fiber laminates in the spar caps. One of the five blade designs is segmented and serves as a benchmark to the state of the art in industry. The results show that controlled flexing requires a reduction in the flapwise stiffness of the blades, but it represents a promising pathway for increasing the size of land-based wind turbine rotors. Given the required stiffness, the rotor can be designed either downwind with standard rotor preconing and nacelle uptilt angles or upwind with higher-than-usual angles. A downwind-specific controller is also presented, featuring a cut-out wind speed reduced to 19 m s–1 and a pitch-to-stall shutdown strategy to minimize blade tip deflections toward the tower. The flexible upwind and downwind rotor designs equipped with pultruded carbon fiber spar caps are found to generate the lowest levelized cost of energy, 2.9 % and 1.3 %, respectively, less than the segmented design. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future work in the area of large flexible wind turbine rotors.
Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Wind Energy Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308; NA0003525
OSTI ID:
1826667
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA--5000-81254; MainId:82027; UUID:21bc3319-94f9-4909-95a8-20cf55cf78f9; MainAdminID:63209
Journal Information:
Wind Energy Science (Online), Journal Name: Wind Energy Science (Online) Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 6; ISSN 2366-7451
Publisher:
European Wind Energy Association - CopernicusCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (21)

A simple solution method for the blade element momentum equations with guaranteed convergence: Guaranteed solution of the BEM equations journal June 2013
Integrated design of downwind land-based wind turbines using analytic gradients: Downwind wind turbines journal February 2016
BeamDyn: a high-fidelity wind turbine blade solver in the FAST modular framework: BeamDyn: a high-fidelity wind turbine blade solver journal March 2017
Integration of multiple passive load mitigation technologies by automated design optimization-The case study of a medium-size onshore wind turbine journal September 2018
A critical assessment of computer tools for calculating composite wind turbine blade properties journal December 2009
OpenMDAO: an open-source framework for multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization journal March 2019
A cross-sectional aeroelastic analysis and structural optimization tool for slender composite structures journal December 2020
An Update to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Baseline Wind Turbine Controller journal January 2020
Innovative rail transport of a supersized land-based wind turbine blade journal September 2020
Opportunities for and challenges to further reductions in the “specific power” rating of wind turbines installed in the United States journal January 2020
Analytical Formulation for Sizing and Estimating the Dimensions and Weight of Wind Turbine Hub and Drivetrain Components report June 2015
Analysis of SNL/MSU/DOE Fatigue Database Trends for Wind Turbine Blade Materials 2010-2015. report February 2016
AeroDyn Theory Manual report January 2005
IEA Wind TCP Task 37: Systems Engineering in Wind Energy - WP2.1 Reference Wind Turbines report June 2019
Optimized Carbon Fiber Composites in Wind Turbine Blade Design report November 2019
IEA Wind TCP Task 37: Definition of the IEA 15-Megawatt Offshore Reference Wind Turbine report March 2020
OLAF User's Guide and Theory Manual report June 2020
User's Guide to PreComp (Pre-Processor for Computing Composite Blade Properties) report January 2006
Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model report December 2006
An Evaluation of Wind Turbine Blade Cross Section Analysis Techniques
  • Resor, Brian; Paquette, Joshua; Laird, Daniel
  • 51st AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference
    18th AIAA/ASME/AHS Adaptive Structures Conference
    12th     https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2010-2575
conference June 2012
Analysis of Ideal Towers for Tall Wind Applications conference January 2018

Similar Records

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail-transportable blades – Part 2: 3D finite element design optimization of the rotor blades
Journal Article · Tue Jan 18 19:00:00 EST 2022 · Wind Energy Science (Online) · OSTI ID:1841047

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
WEIS
WISDEM
controlled flexing
land-based wind
mdao
openmdao
rail transport logistics
wind turbine design