2025/04/30 by Schuster, Daniel, Märtins, David, Jauken, Helge +3
#500 | Naturwissenschaften::530 | Physik
paper · doi:10.15488/19005
We present the verification of a new aeroelastic simulation framework for wind turbines based on the unsteady vortex lattice method and geometrically exact structures. The goal is to provide a mid-fidelity tool, which intrinsically covers the nonlinearities introduced by large deformations and the two-way fluid-structure interaction between the wind turbine and surrounding flow. Taking them into account becomes increasingly relevant for accurate simulations given the increasing turbine size and novel concepts like floating turbines. We give a concise summary of the underlying theory of our framework followed by a fundamental verification against a state-of-the-art tool based on blade element momentum theory and CFD results from literature. We compare torque, thrust, blade tip deformation and blade root stress resultants for different load cases for purely structural, purely aerodynamic and coupled aeroelastic computations of the well-investigated NREL 5MW reference wind turbine. For straight inflow, we find that the overall results calculated by the blade element momentum theory and unsteady vortex lattice method match well. For the more complex case of yawed inflow, we observe differences. Our results are close to CFD results from literature, indicating the potential of the chosen approach for the aeroelastic investigation of wind turbines in different flow conditions.