The paragraph that includes Eq. (8) should read as follows. To ensure that the model can be used for straight vortices in standstill conditions and helical vortices in normal operation, a new 8 is computed. It is a linear interpolation between 8s for straight vortices, Eq. (7), and Wang and Coton’s expression for circular vortices (Wang and Coton, 2001). The root correction described in Pirrung et al. (2016) is included in the variable 8C for circular vortices.

This article reviews the aerodynamic measurement programs on wind turbines that have been performed in the last decades. It is largely based on results from four projects carried out under auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which are denoted as IEA Tasks 14, 18, 20, and 29. The aim of these projects was to collect and analyze aerodynamic measurements on five field facilities (IEA Tasks 14 and 18), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Phase VI turbine placed in the large NASA Ames wind tunnel (IEA Task 20), and the Mexico turbine placed in the Large Low Speed Facility of the German Dutch Wind tunnel DNW (IEA Task 29). Other experimental programs with an important aerodynamic content are touched upon as well. Research areas for which these measurements have led to important progress are identified. The progress is illustrated with analyses on these experiments. It is shown that detailed aerodynamic measurements are an absolute necessity for the validation and improvement of wind turbine design codes, where it is also concluded that the amount of measurement data which has been produced until now is still far too limited. This article is categorized under: Wind Power > Science and Materials

Downwind two-bladed rotor configurations can have advantages in reducing rotor mass for wind turbines, compared with three-bladed upwind designs. However, the tower shadow adds an aerodynamic complication that can be difficult to quantify and predict. This study presents and analyzes a previously unpublished subset of data collected during an extensive wind tunnel campaign, the Unsteady Aerodynamic Experiment (UAE). At high tip speed ratios, the tower shadow is a dominating contributor to bending moment oscillations but can be mitigated by the use of a tower fairing when such a fairing is aligned with the flow. At lower tip speed ratios where the blades can undergo aerodynamic stall and hysteresis, tower shadow was only a secondary contributor to bending moments and the tower fairing did not significantly impact bending moments. The aeroelastic simulation code called FAST was used to predict the same experimental conditions. In general, simulations reasonably predicted most of the cycle-averaged aspects, but only qualitatively predicted the unsteady variations due to tower shadow. To improve simulation predictions inside the tower wake, it is suggested that future work model the unsteady wake component associated with cylinder shedding and to consider a wake model for tower fairings at various wind incidence angles.

Despite their potential as a valuable source of individual turbine power performance and turbine array energy production optimization information, nacelle-mounted anemometers have often been neglected because complex flows around the blades and nacelle interfere with their measurements. This work quantitatively explores the accuracy of and potential corrections to nacelle anemometer measurements to determine the degree to which they may be useful when corrected for these complex flows, particularly for calculating annual energy production (AEP) in the absence of other meteorological data. Using upwind meteorological tower measurements along with nacelle-based measurements from a General Electric (GE) 1.5sle model, we calculate empirical nacelle transfer functions (NTFs) and explore how they are impacted by different atmospheric and turbulence parameters. This work provides guidelines for the use of NTFs for deriving useful wind measurements from nacelle-mounted anemometers. Corrections to the nacelle anemometer wind speed measurements can be made with NTFs and used to calculate an AEP that comes within 1% of an AEP calculated with upwind measurements. We also calculate unique NTFs for different atmospheric conditions defined by temperature stratification as well as turbulence intensity, turbulence kinetic energy, and wind shear. During periods of low stability as defined by the Bulk Richardson number (R B), the nacelle-mounted anemometer underestimates the upwind wind speed more than during periods of high stability at some wind speed bins below rated speed, leading to a steeper NTF during periods of low stability. Similarly, during periods of high turbulence, the nacelle-mounted anemometer underestimates the upwind wind speed more than during periods of low turbulence at most wind bins between cut-in and rated wind speed. Based on these results, we suggest different NTFs be calculated for different regimes of atmospheric stability and turbulence for power performance validation purposes.

Current fast aeroelastic wind turbine codes suitable for certification lack an induction model for standstill conditions. A trailed vorticity model previously used as an addition to a blade element momentum theory based aerodynamic model in normal operation has been extended to allow computing the induced velocities in standstill. The model is validated against analytical results for an elliptical wing in constant inflow and against standstill measurements from the NREL/NASA Phase VI unsteady experiment. The extended model obtains good results in the case of the elliptical wing but underpredicts the steady loading for the Phase VI blade in attached flow. The prediction of the dynamic force coefficient loops from the Phase VI experiment is improved by the trailed vorticity modeling in both attached flow and stall in most cases. The exception is the tangential force coefficient in stall, where the codes and measurements deviate and no clear improvement is visible. This article also contains aeroelastic simulations of the DTU 10MW reference turbine in standstill at turbulent inflow with a fixed and idling rotor. The influence of the trailed vorticity modeling on the extreme flapwise blade root bending moment is found to be small.

This paper presents validation and code-to-code verification of the latest version of the U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory wind turbine aeroelastic engineering simulation tool, FAST v8. A set of 1141 test cases, for which experimental data from a Siemens 2.3 MW machine have been made available and were in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission 61400-13 guidelines, were identified. These conditions were simulated using FAST as well as the Siemens in-house aeroelastic code, BHawC. This paper presents a detailed analysis comparing results from FAST with those from BHawC as well as experimental measurements, using statistics including the means and the standard deviations along with the power spectral densities of select turbine parameters and loads. Results indicate good agreement among the predictions using FAST, BHawC, and experimental measurements. These agreements are discussed in detail in this paper, along with some comments regarding the differences seen in these comparisons relative to the inherent uncertainties in such a model-based analysis.

Wind farm control, in which turbine controllers are coordinated to improve farmwide performance, is an active field of research. One form of wind farm control is wake steering, in which a turbine is yawed to the inflow to redirect its wake away from downstream turbines. Wake steering has been studied in depth in simulations as well as in wind tunnels and scaled test facilities. This work performs a field test of wake steering on a full-scale turbine. In the campaign, the yaw controller of the turbine has been set to track different yaw misalignment set points while a nacelle-mounted lidar scans the wake at several ranges downwind. The lidar measurements are combined with turbine data, as well as measurements of the inflow made by a highly instrumented meteorological mast. These measurements are then compared to the predictions of a wind farm control-oriented model of wakes.

Using detailed upwind and nacelle-based measurements from a General Electric (GE) 1.5sle model with a 77m rotor diameter, we calculate power curves and annual energy production (AEP) and explore their sensitivity to different atmospheric parameters to provide guidelines for the use of stability and turbulence filters in segregating power curves. The wind measurements upwind of the turbine include anemometers mounted on a 135m meteorological tower as well as profiles from a lidar. We calculate power curves for different regimes based on turbulence parameters such as turbulence intensity (TI) as well as atmospheric stability parameters such as the bulk Richardson number (R-B). We also calculate AEP with and without these atmospheric filters and highlight differences between the results of these calculations. The power curves for different TI regimes reveal that increased TI undermines power production at wind speeds near rated, but TI increases power production at lower wind speeds at this site, the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). Similarly, power curves for different R-B regimes reveal that periods of stable conditions produce more power at wind speeds near rated and periods of unstable conditions produce more power at lower wind speeds. AEP results suggest that calculations without filtering for these atmospheric regimes may overestimate the AEP. Because of statistically significant differences between power curves and AEP calculated with these turbulence and stability filters for this turbine at this site, we suggest implementing an additional step in analyzing power performance data to incorporate effects of atmospheric stability and turbulence across the rotor disk.

This paper presents findings from a verification and validation exercise on the latest version of the Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory wind turbine aeroelastic engineering simulation tool FAST. Results from a set of 1141 FAST simulations were compared to those from the Siemens’ aeroelastic simulation tool BHawC, as well as experimental data from a heavily instrumented 2.3 megawatt Siemens wind turbine located at the National Wind Technology Center. The code validation was performed following the IEC-61400-13 standard, where a set of select quantities of interest from simulations at various wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence conditions were used for a three-way comparison between FAST, BHawC, and the measurements. Results highlight many improvements of the latest version of FAST over its previous versions. This paper also provides comments from the authors on the data quality, and avenues for potential future work using these results.

This paper presents an investigation of two well-known aerodynamic phenomena, rotational augmentation and dynamic stall, together in the inboard parts of wind turbine blades. This analysis is carried out using the following: (1) the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Unsteady Aerodynamics Experiment Phase VI experimental data, including constant as well as continuously pitching blade conditions during axial operation; (2) data from unsteady delayed detached eddy simulations (DDES) carried out using the Technical University of Denmark's in-house flow solver Ellipsys3D; and (3) data from a reduced order dynamic stall model that uses rotationally augmented steady-state polars obtained from steady Phase VI experimental sequences, instead of the traditional two-dimensional, non-rotating data. The aim of this work is twofold. First, the blade loads estimated by the DDES simulations are compared with three select cases of the N-sequence experimental data, which serves as a validation of the DDES method. Results show reasonable agreement between the two data in two out of three cases studied. Second, the dynamic time series of the lift and the moment polars obtained from the experiments are compared with those from the dynamic stall model. This allowed the differences between the stall phenomenon on the inboard parts of harmonically pitching blades on a rotating wind turbine and the classic dynamic stall representation in two-dimensional flow to be investigated. Results indicated a good qualitative agreement between the model and the experimental data in many cases, which suggests that the current two-dimensional dynamic stall model as used in blade element momentum-based aeroelastic codes may provide a reasonably accurate representation of three-dimensional rotor aerodynamics when used in combination with a robust rotational augmentation model. Copyright (c) 2015John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hurricanes occur over much of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts, from Long Island to the U.S.-Mexico border, encompassing much of the nation's primary offshore wind resource. Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall as far north as North Carolina, with Category 3 hurricanes reaching New York with some frequency. Along the US West coast, typhoons strike with similar frequency and severity. At present, offshore wind turbine design practices do not fully consider the severe operating conditions imposed by hurricanes. Although universally applied to most turbine designs, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards do not sufficiently address the duration, directionality, magnitude, or character of hurricanes. To assess advanced design features that could mitigate hurricane loading in various ways, this Hurricane-Resilient Wind Plant Concept Study considered a concept design study of a 500-megawatt (MW) wind power plant consisting of 10-MW wind turbines deployed in 25-meter (m) water depths in the Western Gulf of Mexico. This location was selected because hurricane frequency and severity provided a unique set of design challenges that would enable assessment of hurricane risk and projection of cost of energy (COE) changes, all in response to specific U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) objectives. Notably, the concept study pursued a holistic approach that incorporated multiple advanced system elements at the wind turbine and wind power plant levels to meet objectives for system performance and reduced COE. Principal turbine system elements included a 10-MW rotor with structurally efficient, low-solidity blades; a lightweight, permanent-magnet, direct-drive generator, and an innovative fixed substructure. At the wind power plant level, turbines were arrayed in a large-scale wind power plant in a manner aimed at balancing energy production against capital, installation, and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs to achieve significant overall reductions in COE.

This paper presents findings from a verification and validation exercise on the latest version of the U.S. Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory's in-house wind turbine aeroelastic design code FAST v8. Results from a set of 1141 FAST simulations were compared to those from Siemens' BHawC design code results, as well as experimental data from a heavily instrumented 2.3-MW Siemens wind turbine located at the National Wind Technology Center. The code validation was performed following the IEC-61400-13 standard, where a set of select quantities of interest from simulations at various wind speed and atmospheric turbulence conditions were used for a three-way comparison between FAST, BHawC, and the measurements. Results highlight many improvements of the latest version of FAST over its previous versions. This paper also provides comments from the authors on the data quality, and avenues for potential future work using these results.

Continued inquiry into rotor and blade aerodynamics remains crucial for achieving accurate, reliable prediction of wind turbine power performance under yawed conditions. To exploit key advantages conferred by controlled inflow conditions, EU-JOULE DATA Project and UAE Phase VI experimental data were used to characterize rotor power production under yawed conditions. Anomalies in rotor power variation with yaw error were observed, and the underlying fluid dynamic interactions were isolated. Unlike currently recognized influences caused by angled inflow and skewed wake, which may be considered potential flow interactions, these anomalies were linked to pronounced viscous and unsteady effects.

A selection of results from IEA Annex 29 Mexnext on analysis of wind tunnel measurements is presented. A convincing example illustrates the importance of detailed aerodynamic measurements. The influence of MEXICO blade shape deviations between design and manufactured geometry was assessed by scanning the blade geometry and performing comparative CFD simulations with this geometry. Generally speaking the differences between the results for design and scanned geometry do not justify the differences observed between experiments and computations A comparison between calculations and unexplored measurements from the famous NREL UAE PHASE VI experiment at a relatively high rotational speed is performed. It was found that as long as prescribed airfoil data is used, a good agreement exists between lifting line code results. The tip effect remains difficult to predict, although it is questioned in how far the limited blade aspect ratio is representative for large commercial wind turbines. CFD RANS simulations generally perform better in this respect, although separated flow features remain a challenge for these models as well. Preparations for a second experiment on the existing MEXICO test rig are discussed. New configurations will be tested and new apparatus including an acoustic array will be used, by which an even higher quality data set can be assured than the first data set. A standstill test of the MEXICO blades in the Delft Low speed tunnel allowed to determine an appropriate roughness configuration and to make sure that the blades and their data acquisition are in good shape for the New MEXICO campaign.

In the present article we describe CFD simulations of the well known NREL Phase-VI rotor in axial flow conditions using a newly developed technique of combining turbulence modeling by the Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) technique with laminar/turbulent transition modeling by a correlation based method. We demonstrate how the power production around the onset of stall is very dependent on the turbulence intensity in the inflow. Additionally, we compare with measurements and illustrate how the unsteady loads from the DDES simulations can provide valuable insight in the transient behavior of the rotor loads.