1,720,987 research outputs found
Assessing the progression of wind turbine energy yield losses due to blade erosion by resolving damage geometries from lab tests and field observations
Get PDFPredicting losses of wind turbine energy yield due to blade leading edge erosion is a major challenge, hindering blade predictive maintenance, and preventing further cost of energy reductions. Using jointly laser scans of operational offshore turbines, photographs of eroded leading edge samples from swirling arm rain erosion tests and validated simulation methods, this study estimates the growth of energy yield losses as erosion progresses from small-scale distributed roughness to severe damage of the leading edge. A multi-fidelity analysis is employed, combining high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics and blade element momentum theory. Erosion-induced aerodynamic performance losses are analyzed with a scale separation approach, modeling the effects of low-amplitude roughness with generalized rough-wall functions, and capturing the effects of larger geometry alterations by geometrically resolving them. The sensitivity of energy losses to the level of equivalent sand grain roughness, an uncertain parameter of the problem, is analyzed. For a typical North Sea installation site, the loss of energy grows from 0.6%, for moderate modeled roughness, to 2%, for resolved severe erosion. The largest loss at a typical Southern European onshore site is 2.5%. Severe erosion-induced energy losses are found to vary significantly with the damage topography, emphasizing the necessity or resolving larger erosion scales
Strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction simulation of a 3D printed fan rotor
No full textAdditive manufacturing represents a new frontier in the design and production of rotor machines. This technology drives the engineering research framework to new possibilities of design and testing of new prototypes, reducing costs and time. On the other hand, the fast additive manufacturing implies the use of plastic and light materials (as PLA or ABS), often including a certain level of anisotropy due to the layered deposition. These two aspects are critical, because the aero-elastic coupling and flow induced vibrations are not negligible for high aspect ratio rotors. In this work, we investigate the aeroelastic response of a small sample fan blade, printed using PLA material. Scope of the work is to study both the structure and flow field dynamics, where strong coupling is considered on the simulation. We test the blade in two operating points, to see the aero-mechanical dynamics of the system in stall and normal operating condition. The computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) technique is applied to simulate the coupled dynamics. The FSI solver is developed on the base of the finite element stabilized formulations proposed by Tezduyar et al. We use the ALE formulation of RBVMS-SUPS equations for the aerodynamics, the non-linear elasticity is solved with the Updated Lagrangian formulation of the equations of motion for the elastic solid. The strong coupling is made with a block-iterative algorithm, including the Jacobian based stiffness method for the mesh motion
Adaptation of maximum power point tracking controller for damaged wind turbines
No full textWind energy is essential for sustainable energy production, but its growth faces challenges. Wind turbines endure harsh conditions, such as rain, ice, dust, and sea spray, causing erosion and degrading aerodynamics. In this study, we address the relevant issue of leading-edge blade erosion. Initially, the power loss due to erosion will be quantified, considering three severity levels. Subsequently, a controller tuning strategy will be implemented to mitigate these losses during operation. Numerous design load cases (DLCs), each with different seeds, are necessary to achieve statistical significance. Therefore, it was decided to integrate the OpenFAST medium-fidelity software with high-fidelity CFD simulations to characterize erosion and quantify its effects. An initial evaluation of the aerodynamic coefficient maps was performed for the different levels of erosion. Subsequently, the potential gain was quantified by tuning the control strategy. Two sites were selected for the calculation of the Annual Energy Production (AEP) with medium-low wind speeds. Furthermore, a gain scheduling strategy that varies according to erosion and wind speed was considered, achieving positive results and an increase in AEP of up to 0.7% in the most severe case. This was achieved without any modifications to the turbine, but exclusively by acting on the existing controller
Investigations on offshore wind turbine inflow modelling using numerical weather prediction coupled with local-scale computational fluid dynamics
Get PDFThe computational power available nowadays to industry and research paves the way to increasingly more accurate systems for the wind resource prediction. A promising approach is to support the mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) with high fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This approach aims at increasing the spatial resolution of the wind prediction by not only accounting for the complex and multiphysics aspects of the atmosphere over a large geographical region, but also including the effects of the fine scale turbulence and the interaction of the wind flow with the sea surface. In this work, we test a set of model setups for both the mesoscale (NWP) and local scale (CFD) simulations employed in a multi-scale modelling framework. The method comprises a one-way coupling interface to define boundary conditions for the local scale simulation (based on the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations) using the mesoscale wind given by the NWP system. The wind prediction in an offshore site is compared with LiDAR measurements, testing a set of mesoscale planetary boundary layer schemes, and different model choices for the local scale simulation, which include steady and unsteady approaches for simulation and boundary conditions, different turbulence closure constants, and the effect of the wave motion of the sea surface. The resulting wind is then used for the simulation of a large wind turbine, showing how a realistic wind profile and an ideal exponential law profile lead to different predictions of wind turbine rotor performance and loads
Probabilistic analysis of wind turbine performance degradation due to blade erosion accounting for uncertainty of damage geometry
Get PDFGeometry alterations of wind turbine blades due to erosion reduce the blade aerodynamic performance, yielding turbine power and energy losses. This study proposes a novel probabilistic analysis framework combining computational fluid dynamics, probabilistic and deterministic uncertainty propagation, and high-performance computing to assess this performance degradation accounting for the unavoidable uncertainty on field records of blade erosion. This uncertainty presently prevents using erosion records for improving wind turbine maintenance planning, increasing energy yield, and thus further reducing the wind energy cost. The technology is demonstrated by quantifying the statistical moments of power and energy yield losses of an eroded utility-scale turbine at a North Sea offshore site and a southern European onshore site. The expectations of the offshore and onshore annual energy production losses are found to be 2 and 3% of the corresponding nominal values, respectively, with corresponding standard deviations of 0.1 and 0.15%. In the realistic scenario of erosion varying with high radial frequency, these low standard deviations result from partial compensation of the impact of mild and severe damages. These low standard deviations indicate that present uncertainty levels of erosion geometry records can be handled with uncertainty analysis in predictive maintenance for further reducing wind energy costs. With the frequent assumption of small or no radial variation of erosion, the standard deviation of the loss is misleadingly higher. For the first time, the study reports on the significant impact of turbulence intensity of the installation site on the turbine loss variability with the site wind characteristics
MORPHING of REVERSIBLE AXIAL FAN BLADE: A FSI-FEM STUDY
No full textReversible axial fans are widely used in industrial and tunnel ventilation systems, and a lot of research effort is spent in the design process of the blades shape and blades profile. The target is to achieve reasonable performances in both flow directions, but those are still below the levels of the corresponding non-reversible geometries. In this paper, an alternative design solution for reversible axial fan is presented by adopting flexible blades instead of the rigid ones. Such design, inspired by the boat sails, could allow the blade to change its shape by passively adapting to the flow field, from a symmetrical blade profile to a not symmetric one, and thus adapting the curvature to the flow condition. In the paper, a series of alternative materials and material distributions are analysed and compared. The analysis is conducted by performing Fluid-Structure Interaction simulations using stabilized Finite Elements formulations for both the fluid and the structure dynamics. Simulations are performed using the in-house built software FEMpar, which implements the Residual Based Variational MultiScale to model the Navier-Stokes equation, the Total Lagrangian formulation for the non-linear elastic solid and the Solid Extension Moving Mesh Technique to move the fluid mesh
Opensource machine learning metamodels for assessing blade performance impairment due to general leading edge degradation
No full textBlades leading edge erosion can significantly reduce annual energy production of wind turbines. Accurate estimates of the resulting blade performance impairment are paramount to predict the resulting energy losses and enable cost-informed decisions on optimal maintenance and operational strategies, maximizing energy production and reducing maintenance costs. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a robust approach for predicting the performance losses due to LEE. However, the impact of the damage on blade aerodynamics varies depending on damage pattern, extent and location. Therefore, direct CFD simulation of a sufficiently general set of damaged blades is computationally not viable in industrial applications, since the energy loss assessment needs to be performed for hundreds of turbines at many times of the wind farm operation. To address this issue, previous studies showed how CFD can be used to train machine learning metamodels of the perfomance of damaged blade sections, enabling the definition of multi-fidelity energy loss prediction systems. This study presents improved metamodels, using validated CFD to generate training datasets that cover a more general and wider range of erosion patterns, from low-amplitude roughness to severe grooves. In order to provide the industry with additional erosion geometry-linked tools for estimating energy yield losses, and foster further research and development in this area, the developed meta-models have been made available online with unrestricted access
Multi-scale Navier-Stokes analysis of geometrically resolved erosion of wind turbine blade leading edges
No full textA multi-scale computational fluid dynamics analysis of wind turbine blade leading edge erosion is presented. The test case is a large set of eroded blade sections. These are obtained by fitting the resolved eroded leading edge geometry of the outboard part of a multi-megawatt offshore wind turbine to the NACA633-618 airfoil. The erosion geometry measured by a blade laser scan is geometrically resolved in the aerodynamic simulations, whereas the aerodynamic effects of unresolved lower-amplitude scales are accounted for by using distributed surface roughness models. The simulations also account for the laminar-to-turbulent transition of the blade boundary layers with and without distributed roughness. An existing semi-empirical model and simulations of the nominal airfoil enable one to estimate the roughness level needed to trip leading edge boundary layer transition at the considered Reynolds number of 9 million. It is found that a) the mean roughness heights of the observed geometry perturbations are well above the critical roughness height, and b) consideration of either large or small erosion scales in isolation results in underestimating the airfoil performance impairment
Computational analysis of particle-laden-airflow erosion and experimental verification
Get PDFComputational analysis of particle-laden-airflow erosion can help engineers have a better understanding of the erosion process, maintenance and protection of turbomachinery components. We present an integrated method for this class of computational analysis. The main components of the method are the residual-based Variational Multiscale (VMS) method, a finite element particle-cloud tracking (PCT) method with ellipsoidal clouds, an erosion model based on two time scales, and the Solid-Extension Mesh Moving Technique (SEMMT). The turbulent-flow nature of the analysis is addressed with the VMS, the particle-cloud trajectories are calculated based on the time-averaged computed flow field and closure models defined for the turbulent dispersion of particles, and one-way dependence is assumed between the flow and particle dynamics. Because the target-geometry update due to the erosion has a very long time scale compared to the fluid–particle dynamics, the update takes place in a sequence of “evolution steps” representing the impact of the erosion. A scale-up factor, calculated based on the update threshold criterion, relates the erosions and particle counts in the evolution steps to those in the PCT computation. As the target geometry evolves, the mesh is updated with the SEMMT. We present a computation designed to match the sand-erosion experiment we conducted with an aluminum-alloy target. We show that, despite the problem complexities and model assumptions involved, we have a reasonably good agreement between the computed and experimental data
Integration of Computational Fluid-Particle Dynamics Techniques for the Instantaneous Estimation of Particle Erosion Damage on Axial Fan Blade Sections
No full textIn the last decade, the authors focused their research in the development and implementation of accurate numerical tools and methods able to predict the erosion and deposit on turbomachinery blades operating with particle-laden flows. These models and methods give complete three-dimensional description of the phenomenon, but their application is limited to a single working condition of the blade. The present paper covers the first step in the definition of a general methodology to extend the applicability of these tools to a full range of the machines operating conditions. The method aims to obtain an instantaneous prediction of the expected damage pattern for a blade section, given its local working condition in terms of relative fluid-particle flow. The final result is based on a precomputed database associated to the blade section, where the single element is obtained by computing the erosion damage using the aforementioned numerical tools. This paper will show the methodology to obtain the database associated to the midspan section of an induced draft fan subjected to erosion due to coal ash particle. The final database is then used to predict the damage state of the section associated to a given point in the characteristic curve of the fan
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