Modelling the aeroelastic effects of wind turbine blades in the Actuator Disk method

Details

Supervisors

Chatelain, Philippe ; Winckelmans, Grégoire

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil mécanicien, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This study aims at modelling the aeroelastic effects related to wind turbine blades deformation using the Actuator Disk (AD) method. The AD method is compared to the Actuator Line (AL) which accounts for the aeroelasticity of the blades but requires higher computational costs, making it inappropriate for wind farm simulations. Indeed, when a lot of turbines and their related wakes need to be modelled, the computations quickly become heavy and the AL method does not suit such simulations. A balance between computational cost and accuracy is a current challenge and more computationally affordable methods are needed, this is why the AD method has been chosen. The simulations currently using the AD as a way of modelling a wind turbine in a flow don’t account for the blade deformation and fail at capturing accurately the structural and wake dynamics which is crucial when considering wind farm simulations. In order to model those aeroelastic effects as a post-processing operation, three different methods with different computational costs are developed in this work and their accuracy is assessed compared to the AL approach taken as a reference. One of them uses direct integration methods, and the other two are based on modal superposition. The results are evaluated through different grid resolutions and inflow mean velocities, and show that the methods developed produce quite similar results to those obtained with the AL regarding parameters such as blade deflection, loads, power and thrust.