By accounting for blade deformation, the computationally-efficient model will allow for the safe design of bigger blades.
Wind turbine blades are getting bigger and longer — some now exceed 150 meters in length. Under normal working conditions, these massive blades can deform by more than ten meters from tip to tip. These large-scale deformations cannot be modeled by current methods, limiting the advancement of longer, next-generation blades.
To aid the design of ultra-long blades, Yazhen Huang and Mingwei Ge created a computationally efficient model for deformation in long wind turbine blades. The pair started by investigating the wake patterns caused by deformed blades. Since the wakes are curved, they create vortexes and affect the blade’s aerodynamic loading.
Using vortex theory, the researchers built a modified vortex…
