Numerical Investigation of the Aeroelastic Behavior of a Wind Turbine with Iced Blades

Sudhakar Gantasala, Narges Tabatabaei, Michel Cervantes and Jan-Olov Aidanpää
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Sudhakar Gantasala: Computer-Aided Design, Division of Product and Production Development, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, 97187 Luleå, Sweden
Narges Tabatabaei: Fluid Mechanics, Division of Fluid and Experimental Mechanics, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, 97187 Luleå, Sweden
Michel Cervantes: Fluid Mechanics, Division of Fluid and Experimental Mechanics, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, 97187 Luleå, Sweden
Jan-Olov Aidanpää: Computer-Aided Design, Division of Product and Production Development, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, 97187 Luleå, Sweden

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-24

Abstract: Wind turbines installed in cold-climate regions are prone to the risks of ice accumulation which affects their aeroelastic behavior. The studies carried out on this topic so far considered icing in a few sections of the blade, mostly located in the outer part of the blade, and their influence on the loads and power production of the turbine are only analyzed. The knowledge about the influence of icing in different locations of the blade and asymmetrical icing of the blades on loads, power, and vibration behavior of the turbine is still not matured. To improve this knowledge, multiple simulation cases are needed to run with different ice accumulations on the blade considering structural and aerodynamic property changes due to ice. Such simulations can be easily run by automating the ice shape creation on aerofoil sections and two-dimensional (2-D) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of those sections. The current work proposes such methodology and it is illustrated on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5 MW baseline wind turbine model. The influence of symmetrical icing in different locations of the blade and asymmetrical icing of the blade assembly is analyzed on the turbine’s dynamic behavior using the aeroelastic computer-aided engineering tool FAST. The outer third of the blade produces about 50% of the turbine’s total power and severe icing in this part of the blade reduces power output and aeroelastic damping of the blade’s flapwise vibration modes. The increase in blade mass due to ice reduces its natural frequencies which can be extracted from the vibration responses of the turbine operating under turbulent wind conditions. Symmetrical icing of the blades reduces loads acting on the turbine components, whereas asymmetrical icing of the blades induces loads and vibrations in the tower, hub, and nacelle assembly at a frequency synchronous to rotational speed of the turbine.

Keywords: wind turbine; icing; simulation; aeroelastic behavior; CFD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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