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DOE OSTI2025

Modern control system applications at Fermilab with Dart and Flutter

The control system at Fermilab is undergoing an unprecedented modernization effort. Hundreds of legacy applications originally developed with technology from the early nineties will be replaced with a suite of modern web applications. The selection of an user interface framework is a key technology decision that will impact on all the applications developed over the next decade. The Controls department at Fermilab has decided to use Google’s Dart language and Flutter framework for future application development. In this paper we will discuss the decision process that selected Dart/Flutter and the development of early general purpose control system applications with the framework.

Diamond, John [Fermilab]↗

DOE OSTI2016

Stall Flutter Control of a Smart Blade Section Undergoing Asymmetric Limit Oscillations

Stall flutter is an aeroelastic phenomenon resulting in unwanted oscillatory loads on the blade, such as wind turbine blade, helicopter rotor blade, and other flexible wing blades. Although the stall flutter and related aeroelastic control have been studied theoretically and experimentally, microtab control of asymmetric limit cycle oscillations (LCOs) in stall flutter cases has not been generally investigated. This paper presents an aeroservoelastic model to study the microtab control of the blade section undergoing moderate stall flutter and deep stall flutter separately. The effects of different dynamic stall conditions and the consequent asymmetric LCOs for both stall cases are simulated and analyzed. Then, for the design of the stall flutter controller, the potential sensor signal for the stall flutter, the microtab control capability of the stall flutter, and the control algorithm for the stall flutter are studied. The improvement and the superiority of the proposed adaptive stall flutter controller are shown by comparison with a simple stall flutter controller.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2022

Flutter behavior of highly flexible blades for two- and three-bladed wind turbines

Abstract. With the progression of novel design, material, and manufacturing technologies, the wind energy industry has successfully produced larger and larger wind turbine rotor blades while driving down the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Though the benefits of larger turbine blades are appealing, larger blades are prone to aeroelastic instabilities due to their long, slender, highly flexible nature, and this effect is accentuated as rotors further grow in size. In addition to the trend of larger rotors, non-traditional rotor concepts are emerging including two-bladed rotors and downwind configurations. In this work, we introduce a comprehensive evaluation of flutter behavior including classical flutter, edgewise vibration, and flutter mode characteristics for two-bladed, downwind rotors. Flutter speed trends and characteristics for a series of both two- and three-bladed rotors are analyzed and compared in order to illustrate the flutter behavior of two-bladed rotors relative to more well-known flutter characteristics of three-bladed rotors. In addition, we examine the important problem of blade design to mitigate flutter and present a solution to mitigate flutter in the structural design process. A study is carried out evaluating the effect of leading edge and trailing edge reinforcement on flutter speed and hence demonstrates the ability to increase the flutter speed and satisfy structural design requirements (such as fatigue) while maintaining or even reducing blade mass.

Chetan, Mayank (ORCID:0000000241978801)↗

DOE OSTI2023

Impact of Aerodynamic Modeling Assumptions on Flutter Speeds of Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines

Theodorsen’s unsteady aerodynamic theory has been used extensively in flutter speed prediction of wind turbine blades. In this study, three key assumptions of Theodorsen theory (thin airfoil, flat wake, and small angle of attack) have been revisited, and all three assumptions have been addressed in combination to obtain new lift and moment equations that are subsequently applied in flutter calculations for full-scale vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) rotors, not just of an individual airfoil or blade. Furthermore, edgewise aerodynamics terms are added to the lift and moment equations to include their effects on flutter speeds. The newly obtained equations were implemented in the OWENS (Offshore Wind ENergy Simulation) toolkit, which is an FEM (Finite Element Method)-based toolkit for aeroelastic analysis of VAWTs. The effect of modifying each of these assumptions has been studied for the flutter RPM prediction of three primary modes of flutter of VAWTs: propeller, butterfly, and tower modes. For the land-based case, the most change was observed for the flutter RPM of the propeller mode, with a maximum increase of 2.62% for the two-bladed UTD 5 MW VAWT case. For the floating offshore case, the primary flutter modes (tower and platform pitch) were not significantly affected.

Engineering↗

DOE OSTI2016

Bayesian analysis of the flutter margin method in aeroelasticity

A Bayesian statistical framework is presented for Zimmerman and Weissenburger flutter margin method which considers the uncertainties in aeroelastic modal parameters. The proposed methodology overcomes the limitations of the previously developed least-square based estimation technique which relies on the Gaussian approximation of the flutter margin probability density function (pdf). Using the measured free-decay responses at subcritical (preflutter) airspeeds, the joint non-Gaussain posterior pdf of the modal parameters is sampled using the Metropolis–Hastings (MH) Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. The posterior MCMC samples of the modal parameters are then used to obtain the flutter margin pdfs and finally the flutter speed pdf. The usefulness of the Bayesian flutter margin method is demonstrated using synthetic data generated from a two-degree-of-freedom pitch-plunge aeroelastic model. The robustness of the statistical framework is demonstrated using different sets of measurement data. In conclusion, it will be shown that the probabilistic (Bayesian) approach reduces the number of test points required in providing a flutter speed estimate for a given accuracy and precision.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2021

Modal dynamics and flutter analysis of floating offshore vertical axis wind turbines

Floating platforms provide vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) significant advantages over offshore horizontal axis wind turbines, which has led to increased research interest in offshore VAWT technology. Here, this paper examines dynamic stability of floating VAWTs and presents structural dynamic and aero-elastic flutter analysis of utility-scale 5 MW floating VAWTs by coupling a rotor finite element model with a linearized model for the floating system. The coupled floating VAWT model is utilized to study the effects of tower height, number of blades, blade tapering scheme, and impacts of the floating platform on modal properties and flutter. The study provides important new results and guidance to floating VAWT designers: (1) tower height increase leads to lower tower frequencies more prone to resonance, (2) by moving from land-based foundations to a floating TLP foundation, tower-mode frequency is increased significantly (by 49%–68%) which mitigates resonance and increases the flutter RPM (154% increase), (3) increasing the number of blades reduces the tower mode frequencies for both land-based and floating configuration, and (4) blade chord tapering can have a significant impact on increasing the tower mode flutter RPM. Further, analysis of low-frequency rigid body modes shows a safe, higher flutter RPM relative to the operating RPM.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2013

The effect of magnetic flutter on residual flow

The hypothesis that stochastic magnetic fields disrupt zonal flows associated with ion temperature gradient turbulence saturation is investigated analytically with a residual flow calculation in the presence of magnetic flutter. The calculation starts from the time-asymptotic zero-beta residual flow of Rosenbluth and Hinton [Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 724 (1998)] with the sudden application of an externally imposed, fixed magnetic field perturbation. The short-time electron response from radial charge loss due to magnetic flutter is calculated from the appropriate gyrokinetic equation. The potential evolution has quadratic behavior, with a zero crossing at finite time. The crossing time and its parametric dependencies are compared with numerical results from a gyrokinetic simulation of residual flow in the presence of magnetic flutter. The numerical and analytical results are in good agreement and support the hypothesis that the high-beta runaway of numerical simulations is a result of the disabling of zonal flows by finite-beta charge losses associated with magnetic flutter.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Redesign of the Timeline Generator at Fermilab using a web-based Flutter Application, GraphQL API and an IOC

Redesign of the Timeline Generator at Fermilab using a web-based Flutter application, GraphQL API and an IOC ABSTRACT = The control system at Fermilab is undergoing an evolution with a shift towards web-based applications with connections to the EPICS infrastructure. The Timeline Generator (TLG) is an application that serves to coordinate events across the lab using different timing links. These links include the Tevatron clock (TCLK), a 10 MHz serial link with events encoded at 20Hz and Ma-chine Data (MDAT), a communication link with states encoded at 720Hz. This paper covers the redesign of the major components of the TLG. This includes a web-based Flutter application for building timelines. A placement service is in use that has a GraphQL interface and uses a timeline input to compute a schedule of events and states. The Flutter application sends this computed schedule to the TLG IOC via a GraphQL interface to the Data Pool Manager (DPM). The TLG IOC runs on an Arria FPGA, the Accelerator Clock Generator (ACLK-GEN), which is responsible for writing the events and states on to the different timing links.

Carmichael, Linden [Fermilab]↗

DOE OSTI2023

Technoeconomic assessment of distillation heat transfer intensification using aeroelastically fluttering reeds

Dry cooling, where forced air is the heat transfer medium, is a preferable cooling method in arid locations lacking readily available process water. However, such locations often experience high ambient temperatures that limit the effectiveness of air cooling. The objective of this study is to quantify the economic and energetic benefits of heat transfer intensification via the implementation of aeroelastically fluttering reeds to the air-cooled condenser of a methanol distillation column. Condenser size and performance, regarding recovered methanol and required fan power, is evaluated across condenser operating temperatures (T cond ) from 60 to 62°C and heat transfer coefficients (U) U base –2U base for a range of inlet air temperatures based on ambient temperature data from Yuma, Arizona. Under typical design sizing, condenser capital cost was reduced by 6%–35% (1.3U base –2U base ) and nominal methanol recovery was increased from 0.26% to 0.38% (T cond = 62–60°C). At optimized condenser size, all enhanced U and T cond pairs increase methanol recovery and reduce fan power costs compared to the optimal Ubase reference. Overall, using enhanced heat transfer to maintain condenser temperature under a wider range of inlet conditions, rather than to reduce operation temperature, produces more favorable performance. Methanol price is not a determining factor in which pairs are profitable. Analysis was repeated for a global warming scenario, revealing more valuable improvements under elevated temperatures. Energy savings from condenser improvement to a methanol production system are not significant with respect to an optimized conventional system. Furthermore, unit economic and energetic incentives suggest implementation of fluttering reeds may be justified in other applications.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2025

Redesign of the Timeline Generator at Fermilab using a web-based Flutter application, GraphQL API and an IOC

The control system at Fermilab is undergoing an evolution with a shift towards web-based applications with connections to the EPICS infrastructure. The Timeline Generator (TLG) is an application that serves to coordinate events across the lab using different timing links. These links include the Tevatron clock (TCLK), a 10 MHz serial link with events encoded at 20Hz and Machine Data (MDAT), a communication link with states encoded at 720Hz. This paper covers the redesign of the major components of the TLG. This includes a web-based Flutter application for building timelines. A placement service is in use that has a GraphQL interface and uses a timeline input to compute a schedule of events and states. The Flutter application sends this computed schedule to the TLG IOC via a GraphQL interface to the Data Pool Manager (DPM). The TLG IOC runs on an Arria FPGA, the Accelerator Clock Generator (ACLK-GEN), which is responsible for writing the events and states on to the different timing links.

Carmichael, Linden [Fermilab]↗

DOE OSTI2015

Experimental analysis of energy harvesting from self-induced flutter of a composite beam

Previous attempts to harvest energy from aeroelastic vibrations have been based on attaching a beam to a moving wing or structure. Here, we exploit self-excited oscillations of a fluttering composite beam to harvest energy using piezoelectric transduction. Details of the beam properties and experimental setup are presented. The effects of preset angle of attack, wind speed, and load resistance on the levels of harvested power are determined. The results point to a complex relation between the aerodynamic loading and its impact on the static deflection and amplitudes of the limit cycle oscillations on one hand and the load resistance and level of power harvested on the other hand.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2026

Flutter

The following repositories are a set of libraries that are needed for applications that are being developed for users of the Accelerator control system. The programming language used is Dart and for the user interface use the Flutter framework. URL for code repositories: - https://github.com/fermi-ad/flutter-controls-core - https://github.com/fermi-ad/flutter-controls-plotting - https://github.com/fermi-ad/flutter-controls-auth - https://github.com/fermi-ad/flutter-gql-acsys - https://github.com/fermi-ad/flutter-gql-faas - https://github.com/fermi-ad/dart-gql-acsys - https://github.com/fermi-ad/dart-explicit-imports - https://github.com/fermi-ad/dart-gql-faas - https://github.com/fermi-ad/design-system

Neswold, Rich [Fermi National Accelerator Laborato↗

DOE OSTI2025