Downwind pre-aligned rotors for extreme-scale wind turbines [electronic resource]

• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 621.44 Geothermal engineering
• Thông tin xuất bản: Washington, D.C. : Oak Ridge, Tenn. : United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy ; Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy, 2017
• Mô tả vật lý: Size: p. 1241-1259 : , digital, PDF file.
• Bộ sưu tập: Metadata
• ID: 257342
• Chủ đề: 1. 17 wind energy; 2. Downwind; 3. Extreme scale; 4. Load aligned; 5. Turbine

Tóm tắt

Downwind force angles are small for current turbines systems (1-5 MW) such that they may be readily accommodated by conventional upwind configurations. However, analysis indicates that extreme-scale systems (10-20 MW) will have larger angles that may benefit from downwind-aligned configurations. To examine potential rotor mass reduction, the pre-alignment concept was investigated a two-bladed configuration by keeping the structural and aerodynamic characteristics of each blade fixed (to avoids a complete blade re-design). Simulations for a 13.2 MW rated rotor at steady-state conditions show that this concept-level two-bladed design may yield 25% rotor mass savings while also reducing average blade stress over all wind speeds. These results employed a pre-alignment on the basis of a wind speed of 1.25 times the rated wind speed. The downwind pre-aligned concept may also reduce damage equivalent loads on the blades by 60% for steady rated wind conditions. Even higher mass and damage equivalent load savings (relative to conventional upwind designs) may be possible for larger systems (15-20 MW) for which load-alignment angles become even larger. Furthermore, much more work is needed to determine whether this concept can be translated into a practical design that must meet a wide myriad of other criteria.