Guidelines for Aeroelastic Analyses of Wind Turbines Using Multi Body Simulations D8, D2

Guidelines for Aeroelastic Analyses of Wind Turbines Using Multi Body Simulations D8, D2

Holierhoek, J.G.
Energieonderzoek Centrum Nederland

2015

Wind turbine load simulations are currently mostly performed using tools that were specifically designed for that purpose. One of the draw backs of those tools is the inability to add more detail to the structural model when required. For example, there are very few degrees of freedom available in a drive train while one may need more for their simulation. For this reason general purpose multi body simulations could be a good way to resolve these issues. The aerodynamic forces can be added by coupling to the ECN Aero-Module. The calculation times for multi body codes will be larger in general than for the specific wind turbine tools. Especially when one increases the amount of detail, one can run into issues with the calculation time. Using a more detailed aerodynamic approach can also hamper the use. Therefore simulations were performed to get an indication the effect of some of the possible increases in model complexity. The focus was on the aerodynamic model, the structural model of the blades, the tower model and the drive train model. This report provides the main public results from the different projects. <p> It was found that the aerodynamic model does provide different results in cases such as blades individually pitching to reduce the variation in the loads. The structural blade model has significant effect on the variations of the loads on the turbine and its components. The effect of including more modes in a tower has less effect on the results, except for situations where the tower is suddenly excited.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:84fa18a4-3135-4470-91b7-21938ebe7297

823411

ECN-E--15-036

ECN, Petten

report