Wind Turbines

2007-?

This is an open project, which aims at developing open models of wind turbine dynamics and control.

This page documents contributions from individuals and institutions to this project, and links that may be relevant.

People

So far, the persons listed below contributed to MBDyn development and application to wind-turbine modeling.

• Luca Cavagna (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali (formerly Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale), Politecnico di Milano):
  • worked at the real-time simulation of the CART model with RT-MBDyn as part of the SI PARTE! project.
• André Espaze (Dede):
  • worked at the Python binding of MBDyn for wind-turbine simulation.
• Alessandro Fumagalli (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali (formerly Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale), Politecnico di Milano):
  • contributed to MBDyn development
  • worked at real-time simulation of wind-turbines
• Pierangelo Masarati (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali (formerly Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale), Politecnico di Milano)
• Fanzhong Meng (Department of Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft):
  • during a stage at Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali of Politecnico di Milano developed module-aerodyn, a module that interfaces NREL’s AeroDyn wind-turbine aerodynamic loads to MBDyn. The module has been released in MBDyn 1.3.7.
• Marco Morandini (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali (formerly Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale), Politecnico di Milano):
• Giuseppe Quaranta (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali (formerly Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale), Politecnico di Milano):
• Patrick Rix (REpower Systems AG):
  • contributed to MBDyn development
  • contributed to wind-turbine modeling
  • developed MBDyn sim suite, a collection of pre and post-processing tools and models forming a general purpose simulation environment for structural dynamics with an emphasis on wind turbines (a work in progress)
  • developed MBDyn bulk buster, a set of tools to handle output in textual and NetCDF format (a work in progress)
• Jayanarayanan Sitaraman (Jaina) (University of Wyoming):
  • cooperated at the development of fluid-structure interaction
  • interfaced his version of TURNS (URANS CFD solver) to MBDyn
  • contributed to wind-turbine modeling see also the TURNS interface research page
• Pay Thorben Sacknieß (Department of Aerospace and Lightweight Structures, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen):
  • during a stage at REpower Systems AG, under the supervision of Patrick Rix, for his dissertation (6MB) developed a model based on the NREL 61.5m blade turbine; it can be downloaded here (0.8MB).

These persons are contributing to the project as individuals or on behalf of their institutions.

Sponsors

This project has been partially sponsored by:

• The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Con il contributo del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Direzione Generale per la Promozione del Sistema Paese.
• REpower Systems AG
• the SI PARTE! project

Links

• The TURNS interface research page.
• The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
• The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).

Journals

• Journal of Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics
• Renewable Energy
• Wind Energy
• Wind Engineering

Resources

• NREL’s Controls Advanced Research Turbine (CART) model
  • A detailed description of the geometry and of the structural properties of NREL’s CART model can be found in the document NREL/SR-500-32087. Further information can be found in the document NREL/TP-500-32879.
  • A preliminary CART model for MBDyn: rigid pylon, rigid blade w/ aerodynamics, deformable still w/o.
  • An evolution of the CART model for MBDyn: deformable pylon and blades (arbitrary number of beam elements).
  • A real-time simulation of the CART model with RT-MBDyn is illustrated here as part of the SI PARTE! project.
  • A further evolution of the CART model for MBDyn. This model was used for the real-time simulation discussed above. It is now part of the (undocumented) official examples.
  • Patrick Rix provided a sketch of the reference frames used in the definition of the CART model.
• Patrick Rix provided digitalizations of aerodynamic coefficients from NRELOffshrBsline5MW.pdf, an unofficial document by Jason Jonkman, NREL/NWTC, June 14, 2006.
• MBDyn sim suite, a collection of pre and post-processing tools and models forming a general purpose simulation environment for structural dynamics with an emphasis on wind turbines (a work in progress).
• MBDyn bulk buster, a set of tools to handle output in textual and NetCDF format (a work in progress).
• module-aerodyn, an interface between MBDyn and NREL’s AeroDyn, aerodynamics analysis routines for horizontal-axis wind-turbine dynamics analyses (thanks to Fanzhong Meng). More info here (presentation given by Fanzhong at 28th Wind Energy Symposium 47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, 5-8 Jan. 2009 Orlando, Florida, USA). The code was released in MBDyn 1.3.7.
• MBDyn since release 1.3.12 allows run-time loading of gust models. It also provides built-in logarithmic, power law and scalar-function based wind profiles.
• A model based on NREL’s 61.5m blade has been developed and contributed by Pay Thorben Sacknieß.
• MBDyn has been interfaced to FLOWYO (based on TURNS) a URANS solver based on overset grids. It has been applied to the aeroelastic analysis of horizontal axis wind turbines. See
  • P. Masarati, J. Sitaraman, “Tightly Coupled CFD/Multibody Analysis of NREL Unsteady Aerodynamic Experiment Phase VI Rotor”, 49th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Orlando, Florida, 4-7 Jan 2011. The interface uses a generic python communication layer through the external structural mapping force element, released with MBDyn 1.3.15.