A study was conducted of an intermittent binary control strategy for trailing edge flaps and leading edge spoilers installed on wind turbine blades for the purpose of load alleviation. Cost estimation models were developed for the systems to predict overall impact on levelized cost of energy over the lifecycle of the turbine system. Aeroelastic simulations of turbines with the control strategy implemented showed improved levelized cost for some, but not all cases.
Increasing growth in land-based wind turbine blades to enable higher machine capacities and capacity factors is creating challenges in design, manufacturing, logistics, and operation. Enabling further blade growth will require technology innovation. An emerging solution to overcome logistics constraints is to segment the blades spanwise and chordwise, which is effective, but the additional field-assembled joints result in added mass and loads, as well as increased reliability concerns in operation. An alternative to this methodology is to design slender flexible blades that can be shipped on rail lines by flexing during transport. However, the increased flexibility is challenging to accommodate with a typical glass-fiber, upwind design. In a two-part paper series, several design options are evaluated to enable slender flexible blades: downwind machines, optimized carbon fiber, and active aerodynamic controls. Part 1 presents the system-level optimization of the rotor variants as compared to conventional and segmented baselines, with a low-fidelity representation of the blades. The present work, Part 2, supplements the system-level optimization in Part 1 with high-fidelity blade structural optimization to ensure that the designs are at feasible optima with respect to material strength and fatigue limits, as well as global stability and structural dynamics constraints. To accommodate the requirements of the design process, a new version of the Numerical Manufacturing And Design (NuMAD) code has been developed and released. The code now supports laminate-level blade optimization and an interface to the International Energy Agency Wind Task 37 blade ontology. Transporting long, flexible blades via controlled flapwise bending is found to be a viable approach for blades of up to 100m. The results confirm that blade mass can be substantially reduced by going either to a downwind design or to a highly coned and tilted upwind design. A discussion of active and inactive constraints consisting of material rupture, fatigue damage, buckling, deflection, and resonant frequencies is presented. An analysis of driving load cases revealed that the downwind designs are dominated by loads from sudden, abrupt events like gusts rather than fatigue. Finally, an analysis of carbon fiber spar caps for downwind machines finds that, compared to typical carbon fibers, the use of a new heavy-tow carbon fiber in the spar caps is found to yield between 9% and 13% cost savings. Copyright:
The Big Adaptive Rotor (BAR) project was initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2018 with the goal of identifying novel technologies that can enable large (>100 meter [m]) blades for low-specific-power wind turbines. Five distinct tasks were completed to achieve this goal: 1. Assessed the trends, impacts, and value of low-specific-power wind turbines; 2. Developed a wind turbine blade cost-reduction road map study; 3. Completed research-and-development opportunity screening; 4. Performed detailed design and analysis; and, 5. Assessed low-cost carbon fiber. These tasks were completed by the national laboratory team consisting of Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Many factors that influence the effect of leading edge erosion on annual energy production are uncertain, such as the time to initiation, damage growth rate, the blade design, operational conditions, and atmospheric conditions. In this work, we explore how the uncertain parameters that drive leading edge erosion impact wind turbine power performance using a combination of uncertainty quantification and wind turbine modelling tools, at both low and medium fidelity. Results will include the predicted effect of erosion on several example wind plant sites for representative ranges of wind turbine designs, with a goal of helping wind plant operators better decide mitigation strategies.
Wind turbine yaw offset reduces power and alters the loading on a stand-alone wind turbine. The manner in which loads are affected by yaw offset has been analyzed and characterized based on atmospheric conditions in this paper using experimental data from the SWiFT facility to better understand the correlation between yaw offset and turbine performance.
Deep-water offshore sites are an untapped opportunity to bring large-scale offshore wind energy to coastal population centers. The primary challenge has been the projected high costs for floating offshore wind systems. This work presents a comprehensive investigation of a new opportunity for deep-water offshore wind using large-scale vertical axis wind turbines. Owing to inherent features of this technology, there is a potential transformational opportunity to address the major cost drivers for floating wind using vertical axis wind turbines. The focus of this report is to evaluate the technical potential for this new technology. The approach to evaluating this potential was to perform system design studies focused on improving the understanding of technical performance parameters while looking for cost reduction opportunities. VAWT design codes were developed in order to perform these design studies. To gain a better understanding of the design space for floating VAWT systems, a comprehensive design study of multiple rotor configuration options was carried out. Floating platforms and moorings were then sized and evaluated for each of the candidate rotor configurations. Preliminary LCOE estimates and LCOE ranges were produced based on the design study results for each of the major turbine and system components. The major outcomes of this study are a comprehensive technology assessment of VAWT performance and preliminary LCOE estimates that demonstrate that floating VAWTs may have favorable performance and costs in comparison to conventional HAWTs in the deep-water offshore environment where floating systems are required, indicating that this new technology warrants further study.
Wind energy is quickly becoming a significant contributor to the United States' overall energy portfolio. Wind turbine blades pose a unique set of inspection challenges that span from very thick and attenuative spar cap structures to porous bond lines, varying core material and a multitude of manufacturing defects of interest. The need for viable, accurate nondestructive inspection (NDI) technology becomes more important as the cost per blade, and lost revenue from downtime, grows. To address this growing need, Sandia and SkySpecs collaborated to evaluate NDI methods that are suitable for integration on an autonomous drone inspection platform. A trade study of these NDI methods was performed, and thermography was selected as the primary technique for further evaluation. Based on the capabilities of SkySpecs' custom inspection drone, a miniature microbolometer IR camera was successfully selected and tested in a benchtop setting. After identifying key operating parameters for inspecting wind blade materials, hardware and software integration of the IR camera was performed, and Sandia and SkySpecs conducted initial field testing. Finally, recommendations for a path forward for drone-deployed thermography inspections were provided.
This paper discusses the broad use of rotational kinetic energy stored in wind turbine rotors to supply services to the electrical power grid. The grid services are discussed in terms of zero-net-energy, which do not require a reduction in power output via pitch control (spill), but neither do they preclude doing so. The services discussed include zero-net-energy regulation, transient and small signal stability, and other frequency management services. The delivery of this energy requires a trade-off between the frequency and amplitude of power modulation and is limited, in some cases, by equipment ratings and the unresearched long-term mechanical effects on the turbine. As wind displaces synchronous generation, the grid's inertial storage is being reduced, but the amount of accessible kinetic energy in a wind turbine at rated speed is approximately 6 times greater than that of a generator with only a 0.12% loss in efficiency and 75 times greater at 10% loss. The potential flexibility of the wind's kinetic storage is also high. However, the true cost of providing grid services using wind turbines, which includes a potential increase in operations and maintenance costs, have not been compared to the value of the services themselves.
This paper describes the process of transforming measured blade loads, with force estimation, to wind turbine quantities of interest. Uncertainty quantification on the blade load measurement and force estimation is derived and used to estimate uncertainty on aerodynamic torque and rotor thrust for sample cases. A methodology is defined for calculating mean values and quantifying the uncertainty in these important quantities of interest for wind turbines when your available data includes only blade root moment measurements. This paper is not intended to provide precise values for these uncertainties at the current stage, however, sample measurement uncertainties are defined and used along with representative mean values to identify the sensitivity of uncertainty in torque and thrust to the constituent variables and associated uncertainties. The largest contributors of the uncertainty when using blade strain gage measurements to estimate rotor loads is identified for the sample cases revealing the components that have the largest effect on the resulting quantity of interest’s uncertainty, and those which have negligible effect on the uncertainty.
Wind turbine blades pose a unique set of inspection challenges that span from very thick and attentive spar cap structures to porous bond lines, varying core material and a multitude of manufacturing defects of interest. The need for viable, accurate nondestructive inspection (NDI) technology becomes more important as the cost per blade, and lost revenue from downtime, grows. NDI methods must not only be able to contend with the challenges associated with inspecting extremely thick composite laminates and subsurface bond lines, but must also address new inspection requirements stemming from the growing understanding of blade structural aging phenomena. Under its Blade Reliability Collaborative program, Sandia Labs quantitatively assessed the performance of a wide range of NDI methods that are candidates for wind blade inspections. Custom wind turbine blade test specimens, containing engineered defects, were used to determine critical aspects of NDI performance including sensitivity, accuracy, repeatability, speed of inspection coverage, and ease of equipment deployment. The detection of fabrication defects helps enhance plant reliability and increase blade life while improved inspection of operating blades can result in efficient blade maintenance, facilitate repairs before critical damage levels are reached and minimize turbine downtime. The Sandia Wind Blade Flaw Detection Experiment was completed to evaluate different NDI methods that have demonstrated promise for interrogating wind blades for manufacturing flaws or in-service damage. These tests provided the Probability of Detection information needed to generate industry-wide performance curves that quantify: 1) how well current inspection techniques are able to reliably find flaws in wind turbine blades (industry baseline) and 2) the degree of improvements possible through integrating more advanced NDI techniques and procedures. _____________ S a n d i a N a t i o n a l L a b o r a t o r i e s i s a m u l t i m i s s i o n l a b o r a t o r y m a n a g e d a n d o p e r a t e d b y N a t i o n a l T e c h n o l o g y a n d E n g i n e e r i n g S o l u t i o n s o f S a n d i a , L L C , a w h o l l y o w n e d s u b s i d i a r y o f H o n e y w e l l I n t e r n a t i o n a l , I n c . , f o r t h e U . S . D e p a r t m e n t o f E n e r g y ' s N a t i o n a l N u c l e a r S e c u r i t y A d m i n i s t r a t i o n u n d e r c o n t r a c t D E - N A 0 0 0 3 5 2 5 .
The Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility, operated by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind and Water Power Program, is a wind energy research site with multiple wind turbines scaled for the experimental study of wake dynamics, advanced rotor development, turbine control, and advanced sensing for production-scale wind farms. The SWiFT site currently includes three variable-speed, pitch-regulated, three-bladed wind turbines. The six volumes of this manual provide a detailed description of the SWiFT wind turbines, including their operation and user interfaces, electrical and mechanical systems, assembly and commissioning procedures, and safety systems.
This report covers the design and analysis of the hardware safety systems of the DOE/SNL Scaled Wind Farm Technology facility wind turbines. An analysis of the stopping capability of the turbines in multiple scenarios is presented. Included are calculations of braking torque, simulations of high wind speed emergency stops including multiple fault scenarios, and comparisons of predicted turbine performance to the relevant design standards.
This document describes the initial structural design for the National Rotor Testbed blade as presented during the preliminary design review at Sandia National Laboratories on October 28- 29, 2015. The document summarizes the structural and aeroelastic requirements placed on the NRT rotor for satisfactory deployment at the DOE/SNL SWiFT experimental facility to produce high-quality datasets for wind turbine model validation. The method and result of the NRT blade structural optimization is also presented within this report, along with analysis of its satisfaction of the design requirements.
This report documents the design, fabrication, and testing of the SMART Rotor. This work established hypothetical approaches for integrating active aerodynamic devices (AADs) into the wind turbine structure and controllers.
Offshore wind turbines are an attractive source for clean and renewable energy for reasons including their proximity to population centers and higher capacity factors. One obstacle to the more widespread installation of offshore wind turbines in the USA, however, is that recent projections of offshore operations and maintenance costs vary from two to five times the land-based costs. One way in which these costs could be reduced is through use of a structural health and prognostics management (SHPM) system as part of a condition-based maintenance paradigm with smart loads management. Our paper contributes to the development of such strategies by developing an initial roadmap for SHPM, with application to the blades. One of the key elements of the approach is a multiscale simulation approach developed to identify how the underlying physics of the system are affected by the presence of damage and how these changes manifest themselves in the operational response of a full turbine. A case study of a trailing edge disbond is analysed to demonstrate the multiscale sensitivity of damage approach and to show the potential life extension and increased energy capture that can be achieved using simple changes in the overall turbine control and loads management strategy. Finally, the integration of health monitoring information, economic considerations such as repair costs versus state of health, and a smart loads management methodology provides an initial roadmap for reducing operations and maintenance costs for offshore wind farms while increasing turbine availability and overall profit.
The Blade Reliability Collaborative (BRC) was started by the Wind Energy Technologies Department of Sandia National Laboratories and DOE in 2010 with the goal of gaining insight into planned and unplanned O&M issues associated with wind turbine blades. A significant part of BRC is the Blade Defect, Damage and Repair Survey task, which will gather data from blade manufacturers, service companies, operators and prior studies to determine details about the largest sources of blade unreliability. This report summarizes the initial findings from this work.
Operations and maintenance costs for offshore wind plants are expected to be significantly higher than the current costs for onshore plants. One way in which these costs may be able to be reduced is through the use of a structural health and prognostic management system as part of a condition based maintenance paradigm with smart load management. To facilitate the creation of such a system a multiscale modeling approach has been developed to identify how the underlying physics of the system are affected by the presence of damage and how these changes manifest themselves in the operational response of a full turbine. The developed methodology was used to investigate the effects of a candidate blade damage feature, a trailing edge disbond, on a 5-MW offshore wind turbine and the measurements that demonstrated the highest sensitivity to the damage were the local pitching moments around the disbond. The multiscale method demonstrated that these changes were caused by a local decrease in the blades torsional stiffness due to the disbond, which also resulted in changes in the blades local strain field. Full turbine simulations were also used to demonstrate that derating the turbine power by as little as 5% could extend the fatigue life of a blade by as much as a factor of 3. The integration of the health monitoring information, conceptual repair cost versus damage size information, and this load management methodology provides an initial roadmap for reducing operations and maintenance costs for offshore wind farms while increasing turbine availability and overall profit.
Sixty-three years of aero-hydro-elastic loads simulations are demonstrated for a 5 MW offshore wind turbine deployed in shallow water. This large amount of simulation was made possible through the use of a high-performance computing cluster. The resulting one-hour extreme load distributions are examined; the extensive number of one-hour realizations allows for direct estimation of fifty-year return loads, without resorting to extrapolation. This type of simulation study opens up new possibilities for developing wind turbine design standards and discovering physical mechanisms that lead to extreme loads on wind turbine components.
A research project has recently begun to explore the viability of vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) for future U.S. offshore installations, especially in resource-rich, deep-water locations. VAWTs may offer reductions in cost across multiple categories, including operations and maintenance (O&M), support structure, installation, and electrical infrastructure costs. The cost of energy (COE) reduction opportunities follow from three fundamental characteristics of the VAWT: lower turbine center of gravity, reduced machine complexity, and the opportunity for scaling the machine to very large sizes (10-20 MW). This paper discusses why VAWTs should be considered for offshore installation, describes the project that has been created to explore this prospect, and gives some early results from the project. These results indicate a potential for COE reduction of over 20%.
A high-performance computer was used to simulate ninety-six years of operation of a five megawatt wind turbine. Over five million aero-elastic simulations were performed, with each simulation consisting of wind turbine operation for a ten minute period in turbulent wind conditions. These simulations have produced a large database of wind turbine loads, including ten minute extreme loads as well as fatigue cycles on various turbine components. In this paper, the extreme load probability distributions are presented. The long total simulation time has enabled good estimation of the tails of the distributions down to probabilities associated with twenty-year (and longer) return events. The database can serve in the future as a truth model against which design-oriented load extrapolation techniques can be tested. The simulations also allow for detailed examination of the simulations leading to the largest loads, as demonstrated for two representative cases.
In recent years, increasing deployment of large wind-turbine farms has become an issue of growing concern for the radar community. The large radar cross section (RCS) presented by wind turbines interferes with radar operation, and the Doppler shift caused by blade rotation causes problems identifying and tracking moving targets. Each new wind-turbine farm installation must be carefully evaluated for potential disruption of radar operation for air defense, air traffic control, weather sensing, and other applications. Several approaches currently exist to minimize conflict between wind-turbine farms and radar installations, including procedural adjustments, radar upgrades, and proper choice of low-impact wind-farm sites, but each has problems with limited effectiveness or prohibitive cost. An alternative approach, heretofore not technically feasible, is to reduce the RCS of wind turbines to the extent that they can be installed near existing radar installations. This report summarizes efforts to reduce wind-turbine RCS, with a particular emphasis on the blades. The report begins with a survey of the wind-turbine RCS-reduction literature to establish a baseline for comparison. The following topics are then addressed: electromagnetic model development and validation, novel material development, integration into wind-turbine fabrication processes, integrated-absorber design, and wind-turbine RCS modeling. Related topics of interest, including alternative mitigation techniques (procedural, at-the-radar, etc.), an introduction to RCS and electromagnetic scattering, and RCS-reduction modeling techniques, can be found in a previous report.
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Verdant Power Inc. (VPI) have partnered under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to develop a new kinetic hydropower rotor. The rotor features an improved hydrodynamic and structural design which features state-of-the-art technology developed for the wind industry. The new rotor will have higher energy capture, increased system reliability, and reduction of overall cost of energy. This project was divided into six tasks: (1) Composite Rotor Project Planning and Design Specification; (2) Baseline Fatigue Testing and Failure analysis; (3) Develop Blade/Rotor Performance Model; (4) Hydrofoil Survey and Selection; (5) FEM Structural Design; and (6) Develop Candidate Rotor Designs and Prepare Final Report.
The aerodynamic performance and aeroacoustic noise sources of a rotor employing flatback airfoils have been studied in field test campaign and companion modeling effort. The field test measurements of a sub-scale rotor employing nine meter blades include both performance measurements and acoustic measurements. The acoustic measurements are obtained using a 45 microphone beamforming array, enabling identification of both noise source amplitude and position. Semi-empirical models of flatback airfoil blunt trailing edge noise are developed and calibrated using available aeroacoustic wind tunnel test data. The model results and measurements indicate that flatback airfoil noise is less than drive train noise for the current test turbine. It is also demonstrated that the commonly used Brooks, Pope, and Marcolini model for blunt trailing edge noise may be over-conservative in predicting flatback airfoil noise for wind turbine applications.
The principal design drivers in the certification of wind turbine blades are ultimate strength, fatigue resistance, adequate tip-tower clearance, and buckling resistance. Buckling resistance is typically strongly correlated to both ultimate strength and fatigue resistance. A composite shell with spar caps forms the airfoil shape of a blade and reinforcing shear webs are placed inside the blade to stiffen the blade in the flap-wise direction. The spar caps are dimensioned and the shear webs are placed so as to add stiffness to unsupported panel regions and reduce their length. The panels are not the major flap-wise load carrying element of a blade; however, they must be designed carefully to avoid buckling while minimizing blade weight. Typically, buckling resistance is evaluated by consideration of the load-deflection behavior of a blade using finite element analysis (FEA) or full-scale static testing of blades under a simulated extreme loading condition. The focus of this paper is on the use of experimental modal analysis to measure localized resonances of the blade panels. It can be shown that the resonant behavior of these panels can also provide a means to evaluate buckling resistance by means of analytical or experimental modal analysis. Further, panel resonances have use in structural health monitoring by observing changes in modal parameters associated with panel resonances, and use in improving panel laminate model parameters by correlation with test data. In recent modal testing of wind turbine blades, a set of panel modes were measured. This paper will report on the findings of these tests and accompanying numerical and analytical modeling efforts aimed at investigating the potential uses of panel resonances for blade evaluation, health monitoring, and design.
The blades of a modern wind turbine are critical components central to capturing and transmitting most of the load experienced by the system. They are complex structural items composed of many layers of fiber and resin composite material and typically, one or more shear webs. Large turbine blades being developed today are beyond the point of effective trial-and-error design of the past and design for reliability is always extremely important. Section analysis tools are used to reduce the three-dimensional continuum blade structure to a simpler beam representation for use in system response calculations to support full system design and certification. One model simplification approach is to analyze the two-dimensional blade cross sections to determine the properties for the beam. Another technique is to determine beam properties using static deflections of a full three-dimensional finite element model of a blade. This paper provides insight into discrepancies observed in outputs from each approach. Simple two-dimensional geometries and three-dimensional blade models are analyzed in this investigation. Finally, a subset of computational and experimental section properties for a full turbine blade are compared.
The Wind Energy Technology Department at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) focuses on producing innovations in wind turbine blade technology to enable the development of longer blades that are lighter, more structurally and aerodynamically efficient, and impart reduced loads to the system. A large part of the effort is to characterize the properties of relevant composite materials built with typical manufacturing processes. This paper provides an overview of recent studies of composite laminates for wind turbine blade construction and summarizes test results for three prototype blades that incorporate a variety of material-related innovations.
The focus of this paper is on the development of validated models for wind turbine blades. Validation of these models is a comprehensive undertaking which requires carefully designing and executing experiments, proposing appropriate physics-based models, and applying correlation techniques to improve these models based on the test data. This paper will cover each of these three aspects of model validation, although the focus is on the third - model calibration. The result of the validation process is an understanding of the credibility of the model when used to make analytical predictions. These general ideas will be applied to a wind turbine blade designed, tested, and modeled at Sandia National Laboratories. The key points of the paper include discussions of the tests which are needed, the required level of detail in these tests to validate models of varying detail, and mathematical techniques for improving blade models. Results from investigations into calibrating simplified blade models are presented.