Utilizing high fidelity data into engineering model calculations for accurate wind turbine performance and load assessments under design load cases

Abstract

Wind turbines often have lower performance and experience higher loading in real operation compared to the original design performance. The reasons stem from the influences of complex atmospheric turbulence, blade contamination, surface imperfection and airfoil-shape changes. Engineering models used for designing wind turbines are limited to information derived from blade sectional datasets, while details on the three-dimensional blade characteristics are not captured. In these studies, a dedicated strategy to improve the prediction accuracy of engineering model calculations will be presented. The main aim is to present an elaborated effort to obtain a better estimate of the turbine loads in realistic operating conditions. The present studies are carried out by carefully utilizing data from high fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) computations into Blade Element Momentum (BEM) and Vortexline methods. The results are in a good agreement with detailed field measurement data of a 2.3 MW turbine. The studies are further extended to a large turbine having a rated power of 10 MW to provide an overview of its suitability for large turbines. Finally, calculations of the wind turbine under a realistic IEC design load case are demonstrated. The studies highlight important considerations for engineering modeling using BEM and Vortexline methods.