• Wind and Structures
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.507-535
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• 2017

In the strong wind shutdown state, the blade position significantly affects the streaming behavior and stability performance of wind turbine towers. By selecting the 3M horizontal axis wind turbine independently developed by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as the research object, the CFD method was adopted to simulate the flow field of the tower-blade system at eight shutdown positions within a single rotation period of blades. The effectiveness of the simulation method was validated by comparing the simulation results with standard curves. In addition, the dynamic property, aerostatic response, buckling stability and ultimate bearing capacity of the wind turbine system at different shutdown positions were calculated by using the finite element method. On this basis, the influence regularity of blade shutdown position on the wind-induced response and stability performance of wind turbine systems was derived, with the most unfavorable working conditions of wind-induced buckling failure of this type of wind turbines concluded. The research results implied that within a rotation period of the wind turbine blade, when the blade completely overlaps the tower (Working condition 1), the aerodynamic performance of the system is the poorest while the aerostatic response is relatively small. Since the influence of the structure's geometrical nonlinearity on the system wind-induced response is small, the maximum displacement only has a discrepancy of 0.04. With the blade rotating clockwise, its wind-induced stability performance presents a variation tendency of first-increase-then-decrease. Under Working condition 3, the critical instability wind speed reaches its maximum value, while the critical instability wind speed under Working condition 6 is the smallest. At the same time, the coupling effect between tower and blade leads to a reverse effect which can significantly improve the ultimate bearing capacity of the system. With the reduction of the area of tower shielded by blades, this reverse effect becomes more obvious.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.7 no.5 s.26
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• pp.13-19
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• 2004

Centrifugal blowers are widely used for air handling units in industry applications. The blower has a centrifugal impeller and a scroll casing including a driving component such as an electric motor. The impeller takes forward or backward blades to induce flows into the blower, Comprehensive investigation according to the two kinds of blades is systematically carried out for a guidance of design for this kind research. It is observed that flow rate of the blower with forward blades is larger than that of the system with backward blades. Otherwise, the system noise is more pronounced in the case of the blower with forward blades. The reason is due to larger velocity from the rotating forward blades that pose obtuse angle with the circumferential direction. The distinguished characteristics are validated by a parallel experiments with a wind tunnel and in an anechoic chamber. Numerical analysis for the system shows detail information inside the blades and the casing. A series of figures to show the flow details offer deep understanding of the performance of a centrifugal blower with different blades.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.536-544
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• 2009

The performance of radars operated near an offshore wind farm region may be degraded due to the distorted signals by wind turbines. This degradation of radar systems includes ghost effects and doppler effects by a tower, nacelle, and turbine blades consisting of the wind turbine. In this paper, electromagnetic wave backscatterings from a offshore wind turbine are numerically simulated in terms of temporal radar cross section and radar cross section spectra, using a quasi-static approach based on physical optics and physical theory of diffraction. The simulations are carried out at 3.05 GHz for the seven yaw angles and four blade pitch angles. From the results, radar cross section values and doppler effect as turbine blades rotate are investigated.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.10
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• pp.1516-1522
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• 2017

We propose a novel monitoring system for diagnosing crack faults of the wind turbine using image information. The proposed method classifies a normal state and a abnormal state for the blade parts of the wind turbine. Specifically, the images are input to the proposed system in various states of wind turbine rotation. according to the blade condition. Then, the video of rotating blades on the wind turbine is divided into several image frames. Motion vectors are estimated using the previous and current images using the motion estimation, and the change of the motion vectors is analyzed according to the blade state. Finally, we determine the final blade state using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. In SVM, features are constructed using the area information of the blades and the motion vector values. The experimental results showed that the proposed method had high classification performance and its $F_1$ score was 0.9790.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.115-131
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• 2017

Classical flutter of wind turbine blades indicates a type of aeroelastic instability with fully attached boundary layer where a torsional blade mode couples to a flapwise bending mode, resulting in a mutual rapid growth of the amplitudes. In this paper the monitoring problem of onset of flutter is investigated from a detection point of view. The criterion is stated in terms of the exceeding of a defined envelope process of a specific maximum torsional vibration threshold. At a certain instant of time, a limited part of the previously measured torsional vibration signal at the tip of blade is decomposed through the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method, and the 1st Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) is assumed to represent the response in the flutter mode. Next, an envelope time series of the indicated modal response is obtained in terms of a Hilbert transform. Finally, a flutter onset criterion is proposed, based on the indicated envelope process. The proposed online flutter monitoring method provided a practical and direct way to detect onset of flutter during operation. The algorithm has been illustrated by a 907-DOFs aeroelastic model for wind turbines, where the tower and the drive train is modelled by 7 DOFs, and each blade by means of 50 3-D Bernoulli-Euler beam elements.

• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.22-32
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• 2014

The structural design of a wind turbine must show the verification of the structural integrity of all load-carrying components. Also, design load calculations shall be performed using appropriate and accurate methods. In this study, advanced numerical approach for the calculation of design loads based on unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is presented considering extreme design load conditions such as the extreme coherent gust (ECG) and the 50 year extreme operating gust (EOG). Unsteady aerodynamic loads are calculated based on Reynolds average Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with shear-stress transport k-ω(SST k-ω) turbulent model. A full three-dimensional 5 MW offshore wind-turbine model with rotating blades, hub, nacelle, and tower configuration is practically considered and its aerodynamic interference effect among blades, nacelle, and tower is also accurately considered herein. Calculated blade loads based on unsteady CFD method with respect to blade azimuth angle are compared with those by NREL FAST code and physically investigated in detail.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.288-294
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• 2010

In recent years, wind energy has been the world's fastest growing source of energy. This paper describes the structural design and analysis of composite blade for 2 kW-level HAWT (horizontal axis wind turbine). The aerodynamic design and force, which are required to design and analyze a composite blade structurally, are calculated through BEMT(blade element momentum theory) implemented in public code PROPID. To obtain the equivalent material properties of filament wound composite blades, the rule-of-mixture is applied using the basic material properties of fiber and matrix, respectively. Lay-up sequence, ply thickness and ply angle are designed to satisfy the loading conditions. Structural analysis by using commercial software ABAQUS is performed to compute the displacement and strength ratio of filament wound composite blades.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.179-184
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• 2015

In this study, the flap fatigue test of a 48 m long wind turbine blade was performed for 1 million cycles to evaluate the characteristics of acoustic emission signals generated from fatigue damage of the wind blades. As the number of hits and total energy continued to increase during the first 0.6 million cycles, blade damage was constant. The rise-time result showed that the major aspects of damage were initiation and propagation of matrix cracks. In addition, the signal analysis of each channel showed that the most seriously damaged sections were the joint between the skin and spar, 20 m from the connection, and the spot of actual damage was observable by visual inspection. It turned out that the event source location was related to the change in each channel's total energy. It is expected that these findings will be useful for the optimal design of wind turbine blades.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.199-217
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• 2014

Reported experimental and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) studies have demonstrated significant power augmentation of diffuser shrouded horizontal axis micro wind turbine compared to bare turbine. These studies also found the degree of augmentation is strongly dependent on the shape and geometry of the diffuser such as length and expansion angle. However study flow field over the rotor blades in shrouded turbine has not received much attention. In this paper, CFD simulations of an experimental diffuser shrouded micro wind turbine have been carried out with the aim to understand the mechanisms underpinning the power augmentation phenomenon. The simulations provide insight of the flow field over the blades of bare wind turbine and of shrouded one elucidating the augmentation mechanisms. From the analysis, sub-atmospheric back pressure leading to velocity augmentation at the inlet of diffuser and lowering the static pressure on blade suction sides have been identified as th dominant mechanisms driving the power augmentation. And effective augmentation was achieved for ${\lambda}$ above certain value. For the case turbine it is ${\lambda}$ greater than ${\approx}2$.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2014

In this study, a module is developed for modeling and analyzing dynamic behavior of a wind turbine using RecurDyn, which is a commercial multi-body dynamics software developed by FunctionBay, Inc. The wind turbine consists of tower, nacelle, hub and blades. Tower and blades are regarded as flexible bodies for considering elastic effect using beam theory and spring force. In this paper, a constant speed wind was assumed and aerodynamic force is modeled using BEM theory. Dynamic analysis applying this aerodynamic force is carried out. To verify the validity of analysis results, these results are compared to those of GH-Bladed which is a commercial software for analyzing wind turbine system distributed by Garrad Hassan.