Building a Digital Wind Farm

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a high level, holistic overview of the work being undertaken in the wind energy industry. It summarises the main techniques used to simulate both aerodynamic and structural issues associated with wind turbines and farms. The motivation behind this paper is to provide new researchers with an outlook of the modelling and simulation landscape, whilst highlighting the trends and direction research is taking. Each section summarises an individual area of simulation and modelling, covering the important historical research findings and a comprehensive analysis of recent work. This segregated approach emphasises the key components of wind energy. Topics range in geometric scales and detail, ranging from atmospheric boundary layer modelling, to fatigue and fracture in the turbine blades. More recent studies have begun to combine a range of scales and physics to better approximate real systems and provide higher fidelity and accurate analyses to manufacturers and companies. This paper shows a clear trend towards coupling both scales and physics into singular models utilising high performance computing system.

Keywords: Aerodynamics; Fluid–structure interaction; Modelling; Simulation; Wind energy.

Fig. 1

Geometric scale and detail of the major research areas in the wind industry

Fig. 2

Time and space scales of the flow dynamics within the atmosphere

Fig. 3

Simplified structural and CFD models of turbine rotors

Fig. 4

Consideration of the loading and failure mechanisms of a turbine blade using finite element analysis

Fig. 5

Basic transfer of data in FSI simulations with important outputs from the fluid and solid analysis