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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Loads on a Jacket-Supported Wind Turbine During Hurricane Sandy Simulation

Abstract The dynamic response of a jacket-supported offshore wind turbine under coupled wind, wave, and current fields during Hurricane Sandy is the subject of this study. To illustrate the detailed procedure related to the response evaluation of a 5-MW offshore wind turbine with a jacket support structure, we consider a single site where the water depth is 50 m. Loads are computed using two simulation tools, fast and abaqus, with partial coupling. Aerodynamic loads on the turbine rotor are first evaluated using a wind turbine model in fast with a fixed base; then, these rotor aerodynamic loads are applied as point loads at the top of a model of a tower that is supported by a jacket structure in abaqus. On the basis of stochastic simulations, we discuss the applicability of the abaqus jacket modeling and describe the characteristics and comparisons of the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic effects on loads on the jacket members. Details related to the structural model and soil–pile interaction model employed in the analyses are also discussed.

Engineering↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of an Optimal Variable-Pitch Controller for Floating Axial-Flow Marine Hydrokinetic Turbines: Preprint

This article discusses the development of an optimal variable-pitch controller for floating, axial-flow marine turbines. Recently, OpenFAST, an open-source wind turbine modeling tool, has been extended to model marine turbines. A controller is necessary to simulate marine turbines for different load cases using OpenFAST, which greatly impacts the performance of the energy system. Previous studies have designed controllers using a linearized model of the marine turbine, which can be timeconsuming and require the expertise of a control engineer. In this study, we use an automated approach that uses generic models of the marine turbine to identify the controller gains, which can expedite the process of designing a controller. Using an optimizer to identify the control system parameters can additionally improve the controller's performance. The optimal controller tuned using such an approach results in a 20% reduction in the towerbase damage equivalent loading and better tracking of the rated generator speed and power.

closed-loop control↗
DOE OSTI2024

Comparison of steady-state analytical wake models implemented in wind farm analysis software

A common set of mathematical wind turbine wake models are implemented in a few, well-adopted computational tools for wind farm wake modelling. Although the referenced mathematical formulations are common, implementation details may lead to differences in results. This study presents a systematic comparison of the implementation of mathematical wake models in open source, Python-based wind turbine wake modelling software, and a set of the models are directly compared. Despite aligning only the mathematical model parameters and retaining the default computational model parameters, good agreement is found across most of the model implementations, and additional agreement is expected upon further parameters alignment.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Benchmarking of three DWM-based wake models at below-rated wind speeds

Wind turbine wake models are essential tools for predicting power losses and structural loads in wind farms. Among these, the dynamic wake meandering (DWM) model, included as a recommended approach in the International Electrotechnical Commission design standard, is a widely used engineering-fidelity method that balances accuracy and computational cost. This study compares the performance of three DWM-based wake model implementations (from the Technical University of Denmark, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Institute for Energy Technology) under below-rated wind speed conditions. Model predictions of wake flow, power output, and structural loads for a four-turbine row are evaluated across different ambient turbulence levels and wind-direction misalignments and compared against high-fidelity large-eddy simulation results. All three models captured the overall wake evolution and mean turbine performance with reasonable accuracy; their predicted time-averaged thrust and power were typically within 5 %–10 % of the large-eddy simulation benchmark. However, notable differences emerged in wake structure and unsteady load predictions, with discrepancies increasing for turbines further downstream. These differences highlight the importance of modelling choices such as wake summation and turbulence treatment, which strongly influence power-deficit and fatigue-load predictions. Comparison with large-eddy simulations reveals each approach's strengths and weaknesses, indicating where improvements are needed. Overall, the findings point to specific refinements for DWM models to improve their fidelity, ultimately enabling more robust wake predictions for wind farm design and operation.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Definition of the IEA Wind 22-Megawatt Offshore Reference Wind Turbine

This technical report describes the design of a new 22 Megawatt reference wind turbine (RWT). The turbine model was designed collaboratively by two teams at the Denmark Technical University and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory within the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Technology Commercialization Programme (TCP) Task 55 on Reference Wind Turbines and Farms. RWTs serve an important purpose in the wind energy community, since they provide openly available data for models representative of current wind turbine technology, which can be used by practitioners for a variety of modeling purposes, ranging from aerodynamic, structural, and aeroelastic turbine modeling to wind farm flow modeling, across a range of fidelities. The IEA 22 RWT aims to model machines with projected installation in the 2025-2030 time frame. The turbine has a rotor diameter of 284 meters and a hub height of 170 meters. It is a class 1-B machine with a rotor specific power nearing 350 W m -2 and it is mounted on either a fixed-bottom offshore foundation or a semi-submersible floating platform.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Tuning of Nacelle Feedback Gains for Floating Wind Turbine Controllers Using a Two-DOF Model

Designing a collective blade pitch controller for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) poses unique challenges due to the interaction of the controller with the dynamics of the platform. The controller must also handle the competing objectives of power production performance and fatigue load management. Existing solutions either detune the controller with the result of slowed response, make use of complicated tuning methods, or incorporate a nacelle velocity feedback gain. With the goal of developing a simple control tuning method for the general FOWT researcher that is easily extensible to a wide array of turbine and hull configurations, this last idea is built upon by proposing a simple tuning strategy for the feedback gain. This strategy uses a two degree-of-freedom (DoF) turbine model that considers tower-top fore-aft and rotor angular displacements. For evaluation, the nacelle velocity term is added to an existing gain scheduled proportional-integral controller as a proportional gain. The modified controller is then compared to baseline land-based and detuned controllers on an example system for several load cases. First-pass results are favorable, demonstrating how researchers can use the proposed tuning method to efficiently schedule gains for adequate controller performance as they investigate new FOWT configurations.

49 EE - Wind and Water Power Program - Wind (EE-4W↗
DOE OSTI2023

Distributed Wind Aeroelastic Modeling (dWAM)

Aeroelastic modeling is the primary method for the structural and performance assessment of any wind turbine. Despite the advantages afforded by aeroelastic modeling tools, their use in the distributed wind energy industry is limited. dWAM started from the NREL Aeroelastic Modeling for Distributed Wind Turbines project with Damiani & Davis (2022) researching current needs, including input from an industry workshop. NREL's efforts will focus on OpenFAST code improvements, validation using research turbines at NREL's Flatirons Campus, code-to-code verification activities, and development of guidance documents and improved user manuals. Partner lab, Sandia National Laboratories, will focus their efforts on vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) modeling including modeling code development, validation, and user-experience improvements.

aeroelastic↗
DOE OSTI2024

International Energy Agency 22 MW Offshore Reference Wind Turbine

The presentation will be used in a public webinar to introduce the newly developed 22 megawatt offshore reference wind turbine designed within the International Energy Agency Wind Technology Commercialization Programme Task 55 Reference Wind Turbines and Plants. The turbine was designed collaboratively by two teams at the Denmark Technical University and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Reference turbines serve an important purpose in the wind energy community, since they provide openly available data for models representative of current wind turbine technology, which can be used by practitioners for a variety of modeling purposes, ranging from aerodynamic, structural, and aeroelastic turbine modeling to wind farm flow modeling, across a range of fidelities. The IEA 22 RWT aims to model machines with projected installation in the 2025-2030 time frame. The turbine has a rotor diameter of 284 meters and a hub height of 170 meters. It is a class 1-B machine with a rotor specific power nearing 350 W m-2 and it is mounted on either a fixed-bottom offshore foundation or a semi-submersible floating platform.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Incorporating Wind Turbine Choice in High-Resolution Geospatial Supply Curve and Capacity Expansion Models

To achieve national decarbonization goals, U.S. annual deployment of wind energy will need to increase by at least fivefold compared to the recent past. Modeling and analysis frameworks can help inform where and how wind energy deployment might occur and thereby help enable the achievement of decarbonization goals. However, most prior wind energy modeling and analysis studies rely on generalized representations of wind energy technologies. Since wind energy technology advancements are expected to increase the competitiveness of wind energy, it is important to incorporate more detailed representations of turbine technology into wind energy modeling. Here we present a new method that incorporates wind turbine choice into the technology representation of land-based wind energy in long-term planning models. Our method integrates three previously published modeling and analysis capabilities: 1) bottom-up cost modeling to estimate future technology costs, 2) geospatial modeling to represent siting decisions, and 3) power sector modeling to evaluate potential deployment. We refer to this approach as a "customized turbine choice" methodology because it creates a composite turbine scenario by choosing from multiple wind turbine technologies—using site-specific optimized turbine layout and selecting the least-cost technology at each location. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new modeling pipeline by examining how the selection of four different wind turbine configurations might evolve from 2021 through 2040. Our results show that using our customized turbine choice methodology could lead to higher estimates for wind future deployment, which indicates that more simplified modeling might underestimate the role that wind energy could play in meeting decarbonization goals. Future research is needed to further explore the implications of turbine choice and to better inform technology researchers, original equipment manufacturers, and other wind industry stakeholders about the market potential of different wind turbine technologies.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Open Source High Fidelity Modeling of a Type-5 Wind Turbine Drivetrain

The increasing integration of renewable energy resources in evolving bulk power system (BPS) is impacting the system inertia. Type-5 wind turbine generation has the potential to behave like a traditional synchronous generator and can help mitigate the impact on system inertia. A hydraulic torque converter (TC) and gearbox with torque limiting feature are integral parts of a Type-5 wind turbine unit. A high fidelity model of Type-5 wind turbine drivetrain is not openly and widely available for grid integration and transient stability studies. This hinders appropriate assessment of Type-5 wind power plant’s contribution to bulk grid resilience. This work develops and validates a TC model based on those generally used in automobile’s transmission system. Moreover, the concept of torsional coupling is leveraged to integrate the TC and gearbox system dynamics. The entire integrated model will be open sourced and publicly available for grid integration studies.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Verification and Validation of Model-Scale Turbine Performance and Control Strategies for the IEA Wind 15 MW Reference Wind Turbine

To enable the fast growth of the floating offshore wind industry, simulation models must be validated with experimental data. Floating wind model-scale experiments in wind–wave facilities have been performed over the last two decades with varying levels of fidelity and limitations. However, the turbine controls in these experiments have considered only limited control strategies and implementations. To allow for control co-design, this research focuses on implementing and experimentally validating more advanced turbine control actions and strategies in a wind–wave basin for a 1:70-scale model of the International Energy Agency’s wind 15 MW reference wind turbine. The control strategies analyzed include torque control, collective pitch control, and transition region control (setpoint smoothing). Our experimental and numerical results include the effects of varying rotor speeds, blade pitches, and wind environments on the turbine thrust and torque. Numerical models from three different software tools are presented and compared to the experimental results. Their ability to effectively represent the aero-dynamic response of the wind turbine to the control actions is successfully validated. Finally, turbine controller tuning parameters based on the derivatives of thrust and torque are derived to allow for improved offshore wind turbine dynamics and to validate the ability of modeling tools to model the dynamics of floating offshore wind turbines with control co-design.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling and Verification of Lumped-Parameter, Multibody Structural Dynamics for Offshore Wind Turbines

This paper presents the modeling and verification of multibody structural dynamics for offshore wind turbines. The flexible tower and support structure of a monopile-based offshore wind turbine are modeled using an acausal, lumped-parameter, multibody approach that incorporates structural flexibility, soil-structure interaction, and hydrodynamic models. Simulation results are benchmarked against alternative modeling approaches, demonstrating the model's ability to accurately capture both static and dynamic behaviors under various wind and wave conditions while maintaining computational efficiency. This work provides a valuable tool for analyzing key structural characteristics of wind turbines, including eigenfrequencies, mode shapes, damping, and internal forces.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

ExaWind: Open‐source CFD for hybrid‐RANS/LES geometry‐resolved wind turbine simulations in atmospheric flows

Abstract Predictive high‐fidelity modeling of wind turbines with computational fluid dynamics, wherein turbine geometry is resolved in an atmospheric boundary layer, is important to understanding complex flow accounting for design strategies and operational phenomena such as blade erosion, pitch‐control, stall/vortex‐induced vibrations, and aftermarket add‐ons. The biggest challenge with high‐fidelity modeling is the realization of numerical algorithms that can capture the relevant physics in detail through effective use of high‐performance computing. For modern supercomputers, that means relying on GPUs for acceleration. In this paper, we present ExaWind, a GPU‐enabled open‐source incompressible‐flow hybrid‐computational fluid dynamics framework, comprising the near‐body unstructured grid solver Nalu‐Wind, and the off‐body block‐structured‐grid solver AMR‐Wind, which are coupled using the Topology Independent Overset Grid Assembler. Turbine simulations employ either a pure Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes turbulence model or hybrid turbulence modeling wherein Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes is used for near‐body flow and large eddy simulation is used for off‐body flow. Being two‐way coupled through overset grids, the two solvers enable simulation of flows across a huge range of length scales, for example, 10 orders of magnitude going from O(μm) boundary layers along the blades to O(10 km) across a wind farm. In this paper, we describe the numerical algorithms for geometry‐resolved turbine simulations in atmospheric boundary layers using ExaWind. We present verification studies using canonical flow problems. Validation studies are presented using megawatt‐scale turbines established in literature. Additionally presented are demonstration simulations of a small wind farm under atmospheric inflow with different stability states.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

The curled wake model: a three-dimensional and extremely fast steady-state wake solver for wind plant flows

Abstract. Wind turbine wake models typically require approximations, such as wake superposition and deflection models, to accurately describe wake physics. However, capturing the phenomena of interest, such as the curled wake and interaction of multiple wakes, in wind power plant flows comes with an increased computational cost. To address this, we propose a new hybrid method that uses analytical solutions with an approximate form of the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations to solve the time-averaged flow over a wind plant. We compare results from the solver to supervisory control and data acquisition data from the Lillgrund wind plant obtaining wake model predictions which are generally within 1 standard deviation of the mean power data. We perform simulations of flow over the Columbia River Gorge to demonstrate the capabilities of the model in complex terrain. We also apply the solver to a case with wake steering, which agreed well with large-eddy simulations. This new solver reduces the time – and therefore the related cost – it takes to simulate a steady-state wind plant flow (on the order of seconds using one core). Because the model is computationally efficient, it can also be used for different applications including wake steering for wind power plants and layout optimization.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Sensitivity Analysis of Numerical Modeling Input Parameters on Wind Turbine Loads in Deterministic Transient Load Cases

Aero-hydro-elastic-servo numerical models used to design and analyze wind turbines are based on thousands of variable input parameters that dictate the inflow, aerodynamic, structural, and control characteristics of the system as well as sea state, hydrodynamic, and mooring characteristics for fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind turbines. Each of these parameters has some level of uncertainty, which can significantly impact the predicted loads. Understanding the uncertainty in the inputs is critical to understanding the uncertainty in the outputs. This work demonstrates a screening technique to identify which parameters ultimate loads are most sensitive to so that more focus can be given to quantifying the possible range of those parameters. This technique has been demonstrated previously for different turbine and load case types and is extended here for a floating offshore wind turbine in design load cases with transient events both in the inflow and operations. Each load case features a deterministic gust, including variations in wind speed, direction, and shear. Load cases are considered with an operating turbine as well as with prescribed fault, startup, and shutdown procedures. The study found that key input parameters with a large impact on loads include the length of the gust, the magnitude of direction change and speed in the gust, the initial wind speed, and the shape of the gust profile.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Aeroelastic Modelling of Large Wind Turbines: Towards a Unified OpenFAST-SEAHOWL Approach

In recent years, the scale of wind turbines has significantly increased to maximize energy capture for a given site (particularly offshore), presenting new challenges in terms of structural design and dynamics. As towers grow taller and blades grow longer, flexion and torsion of the latter have a non-negligible impact on the behavior and performance of the turbine in terms of overall loads, power production, and control. When representing large-scale wind turbines numerically to capture these important effects, particular attention must therefore be given to the level of fidelity for representing each structural component, as well as the coupling scheme used between them to keep simulations accurate, stable, and efficient. To address this issue, we combine here the two following tools: (1) OpenFAST, the reference whole-turbine simulation tool from NREL with standalone modules covering each physics and the choice between loose coupling and a new tight coupling scheme for structural dynamics, and (2) SEAHOWL, the whole-turbine simulation tool from TotalEnergies with monolithic coupling of structural dynamics through Project Chrono and partitioned coupling for multiphysics interactions.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Open Source High Fidelity Modeling Of A Type-5 Wind Turbine Drivetrain

The purpose of this code is to provide a high-fidelity model of Type-5 wind turbine drivetrain for grid integration and transient stability studies. The increasing integration of renewable energy resources in evolving bulk power system (BPS) is impacting the system’s inertia. Type-5 wind turbine generation has the potential to behave like a traditional synchronous generator and can help mitigate the aforementioned impact. A hydraulic torque converter (TC) and gearbox with torque limiting feature are integral parts of a Type-5 wind turbine unit. A generic and high-fidelity model of a Type-5 wind turbine drivetrain is not openly and widely available for grid integration and transient stability studies. This hinders appropriate assessment of Type-5 wind power plant's contribution to the BPS resilience. This work develops and validates a TC model based on those generally used in automobile's transmission system.

Hussain, Tanveer↗